Summary:
ZIP code 45805 in Lima, Ohio contains 3 public schools serving 1,128 students: Heritage Elementary School (PK–4, 448 students), Maplewood Elementary School (grades 3–4, 346 students), and Lima West Middle School (grades 7–8, 334 students). There is no school here serving grades 5–6 or 9–12, so families leave the ZIP for upper-elementary and high-school years. Two of the three schools — 69% of enrollment — belong to Lima City, a district at the 25th percentile statewide, while Maplewood belongs to Shawnee Local, at the 74th percentile.
Maplewood is the academic anchor: it is the only school in the ZIP scoring above the state average in every tested subject in both reported years, with 2025-2026 third-grade ELA at 76.3% proficient versus 63.4% statewide, and the lowest chronic absenteeism at 6.9%. Its caveat is direction — its percentile slipped from 77th to 59th and its star rating fell from 4 to 3. Heritage trails the state by roughly 18 points but is the only school improving, gaining about 3.4 points of aggregate proficiency, and its 32.3% absenteeism rate is 7 points better than its own district. Lima West sits at the 8th percentile with 0 stars, 8th-grade math proficiency in the low-to-mid teens (10.2%), and chronic absenteeism of 53.8% — more than half its students, and 14.5 points worse than its district.
The clearest pattern is that absenteeism, district affiliation, and achievement line up in the same order across these three schools: 6.9% → 32.3% → 53.8% absenteeism mirrors 70.1 → 45.8 → 22.8 aggregate proficiency. Resources explain little — the highest-spending school has the lowest elementary proficiency, and the highest student-teacher ratio (Maplewood, 19.2) pairs with the best results. Note that free/reduced-lunch data is not reported for Heritage or Lima West, and spending figures date to 2018-2019.
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