Located in the heart of Toledo and established in 1913, the ESC of Lake Erie West is one of the largest educational service centers in the State of Ohio. The ESC of Lake Erie West is part of a statewide network of ESCs in Ohio and provides services at the local, regional, and statewide level.
Many state programs such as preschool accreditation, community schools, gifted education, public preschool, and others have been piloted through the ESC of Lake Erie West.
Some major service areas of the ESC of Lake Erie West are:
Auxiliary Services: Through this federal and state-funded program, chartered non-public schools receive services for their students with staff hired through the ESC of Lake Erie West.
Center for Teaching, Learning, and Innovation: The Center for Teaching, Learning, and Innovation offers regular professional learning opportunities on a wide variety of topics. Consultants implement a variety of state and grant-funded initiatives focused on student learning and professional growth.
Center for Student Services and Special Programs: The Center for Student Services and Special Programs provides services to students from preschool through age 21 challenged by physical, mental, and emotional disabilities. Specific programs are the Alternate Learning Center and the Early Childhood Program. A variety of different services focused on special education students are also offered to client districts (e.g. occupational, physical, and speech therapy, vision and hearing impaired services, school psychologists, and adapted physical education).
This Center also includes Gifted Education staff who serve students in seven school districts.
The Family Engagement Center helps local districts identify, engage, support, and meet the needs of vulnerable students and their families.
The Challenger Learning Center immerses students in a realistic simulation of NASA’s Mission Control Center and Space Lab and the STEM Center provides a professional learning space for educators to promote, teach, and model STEM instructional practices in a makerspace setting
Community Schools Center: The ESC of Lake Erie West helped pilot community schools in Ohio at the direction of the state legislature and currently sponsors community schools located throughout Ohio. As a sponsor, the ESC of Lake Erie West’s community schools staff is primarily focused on three main areas – compliance with state laws and regulations, promoting a strong academic program at each sponsored school, and ensuring that each sponsored school uses quality practices in its operations.
Fiscal Services: The treasurer’s office provides training in school accounting, assistance with financial planning, preparation of financial statements, payroll, and purchase order processing, oversight of federal and state reporting, grant management, EMIS support, health insurance administration, STRS/SERS, and worker’s compensation reporting.
State Support Team – Region One: The ESC of Lake Erie West is the fiscal agent for State Support Team Region 1 (SSTR1), one of sixteen State Support Teams in Ohio. Focus areas of SSTR1 include Career Technical Education, Early Learning, Family & Community Engagement, Literacy, Post-Secondary Planning, School Improvement, Social Emotional Learning & PBIS, and Teaching Diverse Learners. The SSTR1 serves priority schools and school districts in Defiance, Fulton, Hancock, Henry, Lucas, Ottawa, Paulding, Putnam, Sandusky, Seneca, Van Wert, Williams, and Wood counties.
More information on these services and programs can be found on other pages of this website.