Since the beginning of the school year, students and teachers have seen an increase in their class sizes, specifically in the English and math departments. This rise in seat count is due to multiple factors: a larger freshman class than anticipated, student course selections and the school’s budget.

Associate Principal for Curriculum and Instruction Jacob Giblin explained how the freshman enrollment is higher than expected.

“We’ve got, in freshman classes in particular, a lot more freshmen than when we originally built the schedule. So through the summer, we had around 30 plus additional freshmen added to the building,” Giblin said.

Fluctuations in class size aren’t uncommon between school years. This year’s classrooms are noticeably crowded because once students locked in their course selections, the only way to create a schedule that fit everyone’s needs was to have some loaded classes.

“There are tight spots in foundations and math three in particular. Math three was just because of the numbers we had, but the biggest concentration seems to have been in our foundations class,” Giblin said.

Math teacher Christine Toellen has noticed an increase in all of her classes, and noted this is due to financial reasons.

“There’s a budget for employees, then that budget needs to be figured out so that we can have the students that we have. For example, maybe we need 30 sections of math, but we only have enough of a budget for 28 sections. That means our class sizes have to increase because we can’t deny kids the right to take a math class,” Toellen said.

Giblin elaborated on the budget aspect of class sizes.

“We certainly had less full-time employed teachers, so if you have less teachers, that means you have more students,” Giblin said.

Toellen agreed that budget restrictions coupled with the number of available teachers contributed to full rosters.

“This is what class sizes had to be to be able to fit within the budget for full-time employees,” Toellen said.

The school profile from this year reported that the average class size is 21 students, which is a drop from the reported number in the 2021-2022 school year of 25 students per class. However, this doesn’t mean the school community hasn’t felt an increase in class sizes.

“There are classes for multi-needs students or specific intervention classes that sometimes have far fewer students that are also worked into those averages,” Giblin said. “So some of that is the reason for the report card differences versus what someone might typically experience in their class sizes.”

Students expressed how larger class sizes have an impact on their emotional and academic experience. Senior Marion Casey is an AP German student, but her class period also includes students at the German three, German three honors, and German four levels.

“This year she’s trying to combine it all in one so we all get the same material and she isn’t just favoring one class over another,” Casey said.

For many students in stacked classes such as German, TV and art, it can be confusing when there are many levels in one class.

Toellen has also encountered obstacles with her larger class sizes.

“A lot of the individualized attention I was able to give students before, I’m only able to give about a fraction of it. And if you think about it, last year my classes were on the upper end 26, and on the lower end 16, and now this year they’re way more than that. So I have almost, if not more than one entire section of kids this year just because my class sizes are so big,” Toellen said.

Casey believes that she works better in a smaller class environment.

“I feel like we interact with more students and the teacher gives us more one-on-one time. I feel like that’s beneficial for a student,” Casey said.