Guyton Elementary School typifies the challenges the new administration faces in trying to improve troubled elementary schools.

DETROIT

High on a wall in the dimly lit first floor hallway of Guyton Elementary School is a banner championing an ambitious goal for the children of this poor east side neighborhood: “Guyton Students Are College Bound.”

Guyton’s 304 students are from some of the most troubled families in America and are part of one of the nation’s most dysfunctional public school systems, the kind President Barack Obama says must be fixed.

Five of Detroit’s 27 public high schools are considered among the best in the nation. Most of the rest, however, are considered dropout factories. Only 24.9 percent of its students graduate. Enrollment in the Detroit Public Schools, where 72 percent of all students qualify for free or reduced price school meals, is nose-diving by more than 10,000 students a year, as people flee the school system, the city and an economically battered state. Its enrollment stands at 94,000 students, down by nearly 20,000 over the past two years and more than two-thirds since its 1966 peak of nearly 300,000.

The school system, which has closed 35 schools in the past two years and plans to shut about 18 a year for the next few years, is operating with a $400 million deficit. It is facing a possible state takeover for the second time in a decade. Last month, its politically entrenched school board fired its recently hired superintendent.

The children of Guyton are too young to grasp the administrative chaos around them. They are shielded by nurturing teachers and school volunteers offering hugs of encouragement at every turn. These kids don’t know they are running against the wind as they read that banner high on the wall.

Meanwhile, the Guyton adults — the principal, teachers, volunteers, the handful of parents and outside supporters — are putting in 110 percent trying to defy a harsh reality. They are so relentlessly vested in creating a new future for these young Americans that failure to give Guyton students a solid launch toward college is, in their minds, not an option. They look into the eyes of these children every day and now, more than ever, see a potential U.S. president. After all, Barack Obama once had much in common with these children. He is the son of a single mother, and they too were on food stamps for a while, as many of these kids households are.