As Lakewood Catholic Academy celebrates its 20th Anniversary during the 2024-25 school year, we asked Founding Principal, Maureen Arbeznik, to provide a reflection on the formation of LCA and its evolution over the past 20 years. Maureen will share more of her reflections during episode 3 of the Saints Speak Podcast being released on September 24.
No matter when I come to LCA and see the brightly painted walls, the School of Fish in the main hall, and the television monitor that streams the highlights of student activities, I can’t help but remember that day: July 1, 2005 when, after months of dreaming and planning, we were handed the keys to 14808 Lake Avenue and the real work of creating our new school began. For seven weeks that sweltering summer, volunteers from St. Luke, St. Clement, and St. James, along with parents, students, faculty, and alums worked around the clock to transform the building from a high school nearly 100 years old into a bright and shiny elementary school that would welcome new Saints at the end of August.
I’ll never forget the gym that was piled 10-15 feet high with desks and boxes of books that were waiting to find a new home in the building; the library books from the three parish schools that sat on the floor of the old library as the high school books still had not been removed; the dedicated teachers who sifted through materials, hoping that their classroom treasures had survived the move across town.
Gradually, over those seven weeks, Lakewood Catholic Academy was born and with it, a new community. In the midst of window glazing, painting, heavy lifting, and washing lockers, volunteers discovered that others shared their same passion — to create a strong and vibrant Catholic elementary school in the City of Lakewood where children could flourish. In the words of one of our founding pastors, Fr. Al Winters, “good enough” would no longer be “good enough.”
For the past 20 years, our community has been blessed with a steady supply of passionate people who have dared greatly to ensure that Lakewood Catholic Academy would never be just “good enough.” Posters and banners that now proclaim LCA as an International Baccalaureate World School, a Blue Ribbon School, and a Green Ribbon School, along with other prestigious awards, can be spotted everywhere in the building and on campus.
Our renovated gymnasium today hosts not only PE classes, but also student performances and competitions, as well as diocesan CYO games.
Our digitally catalogued, sunlit library is visited regularly not only by students in kindergarten through eighth grade, but also by our smallest Saints who are part of our Early Childhood Program.
Our faculty members, who were instrumental in LCA being named a Top Work Place, challenge themselves daily to create engaging lessons to ensure that the needs of all of the 700+ children who come to campus every day are met.
Never could I have imagined on that blistering hot summer day in July 2005 that LCA would, in less than 20 years, become the premier Catholic elementary school in Northeast Ohio. Fr. Winters’ instruction to be better than “good enough” has guided us for the past 20 years and will continue to inspire and challenge us, I know, for the next 20 years and beyond.
