Summary:
Lakota Local is a large suburban Ohio district serving 21 schools — 14 elementary buildings (including several K–2 early childhood schools), 4 middle/junior highs, and 3 high schools — with a total enrollment of 17,658 students. Elementary schools hold about 52% of students, high schools about 33%, and middle/junior highs about 15%. District-wide, Lakota Local ranks 172 of 773 Ohio districts, placing it at the 78th percentile with 4 stars, a strong overall position. That single district number, however, hides a very wide spread among individual schools, from a 95th-percentile elementary to a 9th-percentile high school.
At the top, Independence Elementary School ranks 76 of 1,560 elementary schools (95th percentile, 5 stars), with science at 89.4% and math and ELA mostly in the high 80s to low 90s, plus the district's lowest free/reduced lunch rate at 20.07%. Liberty Junior School is the strongest middle/junior high at the 90th percentile (5 stars), and the four junior highs all report 100% Geometry proficiency. Lakota East High School is the top high school at the 88th percentile, improving from the 75th to the 84th to the 88th percentile, and it outperforms Lakota West High School in most tested subjects. Cherokee Elementary School stands out for the district's lowest chronic absenteeism at 6.0%.
The clearest concern is Lakota Central, a small high school of 164 students at the 9th percentile with 0 stars, with Algebra I at 6.7%, Geometry at 10.7%, chronic absenteeism at 55.8%, free/reduced lunch at 68.9%, and an 85.9% graduation rate versus the Lakota Local rate of 94.5%. Absenteeism is a broader high school issue: Lakota West is at 30.0% and Lakota East at 20.0%, both above the district's 15.5%. Notably, spending does not track closely with results — Liberty Junior spends the least per student ($7,532 in 2018–2019) yet ranks at the 90th percentile.
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