Lyons Community School

Lyons' 32.5% ELA proficiency and 18.5% math proficiency are roughly half the District 14 average on both measures, and students here are catching up rather than leading. The longer view is genuinely hopeful: ELA proficiency has climbed from 10.6% in 2016 to 32.5% in 2025, and math has risen from 1.8% to 18.5% over the same window — among the steadiest improvements in the district. The single-year math spike of 28.6% in 2024 was not sustained, so families should treat scores as a rising-but-volatile trend rather than a stable floor. Science proficiency at 15.6% rounds out the picture: a school still earning its stripes, with momentum working in its favor.

The day-to-day climate reads as warm and tightly governed by relationships, not by suspensions — Lyons reported zero suspensions in the most recent year, extraordinary against a district average suspension rate of 0.56%. Parent satisfaction is a striking 100%, with parent-teacher trust at 98% and parent-principal trust at 100%, though it's worth flagging that only 15 families returned the survey (a 5% response rate), so those numbers reflect a small, possibly highly invested slice of the community. Teacher-side metrics are more robust, with 47 respondents rating instructional quality at 95% and collegial trust at 95%. The cloud in the data is chronic absenteeism at 50.9% — half the student body is missing enough school to count as chronically absent — and overall attendance of 83.7% trails the district's 88.9% by more than five points, a real obstacle to academic growth.

Lyons' student body is 57% Hispanic and 39% Black, with smaller shares of Asian, white, and multiracial students — a narrower demographic mix than the city as a whole, with a diversity index of 48%. The school's economic need index of 91.2 places it firmly in the high-need category, and a third of students have IEPs, well above typical. East Williamsburg itself runs in a different register: median household income of about $81,788 is respectable, but 24.3% of residents live below the poverty line and only 9.2% of households include children, meaning the neighborhood skews young and transient rather than family-dense. In practice, Lyons draws its families from across Brooklyn, not just from the blocks around Graham Avenue.

East Williamsburg is a renter-heavy pocket of Brooklyn where only about one in eight households owns and the median home value sits just over $1 million — expensive by any measure, but incomes in the eight-thousands suggest many residents are cost-burdened renters. Adults here are reasonably well-educated (44.1% hold a bachelor's degree or higher), but the share of households with kids is low, so on any given block you see more young adults than school-age children. The area sits along the L train corridor, with three stops within a short walk and quick service into Manhattan.

The school is well-served by the L train: Grand St is about a 5-minute walk, Montrose Av about 6 minutes, and Graham Av about 7 minutes.