Why Do High School Classes Have More Students Now Than In Previous Years?
The students in Mrs. Doyle's 1st Period English class starting their morning (Ryan Win-Ruan, The Puma Prensa)
Written by: Ryan Win-Ruan, Staff Writer
As school starts back up, some of the teachers at Maria Carrillo High School, especially the Honors and AP teachers, are now more concerned with the rapid return of an old issue: their classrooms are incredibly overcrowded. Many of the staff and students have expressed concerns about the higher classroom populations–teachers worry about the materials needed to operate larger classes and students are concerned that the cramped environment might be distracting. Class budgeting and overall student enrollment size on campus also tie into the overpopulation, which has brought into question the feasibility of fixing the congested environment that plagues many of Carrillo’s higher-level classes.
The rising student enrollment that Carrillo faces isn’t new. In the 2021-2022 school year, there were about 370 freshmen enrolled at Maria Carrillo. Now, there are almost 430, a 14% increase, and the total population of the school has also slowly increased as well. Besides the overall increase in the student body, there are a few other factors contributing to the issue of individual classes becoming overcrowded–namely the school’s apparent lack of funding for certain classes, especially Honors and AP courses, and areas of the school to house the aforementioned classes. There are too many students for a normal-sized class–thirty-three to forty students in particularly crowded classes –but not enough students to require a whole new class to be scheduled, causing Honors and AP classes to become stuffed with students who can’t be placed elsewhere.
One of Maria Carrillo’s math teachers, Allison Johnson, expressed her opinions on the issue. She explains, “I do feel bad for the kids who have to sit at the back counter, because it’s probably uncomfortable that they have to turn around to take notes.” She mentioned that the overcrowding causes issues while trying to individually connect with her students, as the higher classroom population means that there is less time to converse with students, and she has to focus on class material. As she mentioned, many teachers were struggling to contact students who had problems with the curriculum due to her having to focus on their whole class, and some were placed in inconvenient areas of the classroom, which made it hard for them to see the material and hear the teacher. However, she thinks the clogged classroom climate has both good and bad sides, saying, “It makes it harder for me to get around and check in with each student in the class, which is something I like to do. But, once I meet all my students, I kind of get attached to them right away, and I wouldn’t want anyone to leave the class.”
A teacher in Maria Carrillo’s science department, Amy Breninger, agrees that the stuffy classes are currently an under-discussed issue, voicing that individual student help on schoolwork and the students’ safety in the science rooms were her biggest concerns with the overcrowding. She has noticed that the problem has been around for a while now, and many of the teachers in her department have been affected by it, so she has been very vocal in terms of ways to stop the issue, which she deems as important.
Counselor Ellisa Beamish was asked what she thought of the higher classroom populations, and according to her, overcrowding is a pretty big issue for both teachers and students, as it’s harder to have individualized education and personal help. She mentioned that the school’s budget cuts were a likely source of the issue, since they had caused some sections to be closed down, so there were less classrooms for an ever growing number of students.
Now, this issue is not only present at MCHS. According to the New York Times, the issue is also present as far south as Los Angeles, where some teachers have to teach up to sixty-eight students in each class, though forty is a more common number. Walden University has also done research on the issue, and in part of a longer article on student learning and the effectiveness of US classrooms, they claim that overcrowded classrooms are one of the reasons why the US education system is relatively ineffective, stating in that same article, “an ideal classroom would be fifteen to twenty students, but many classrooms today have over thirty or even forty students.” So, the issue of our critically overcrowded classrooms is much more far reaching and bigger in scope than many realize, and it has become a pretty big issue for many students and teachers all across the state, which raises a question for students and staff alike: How can this problem be fixed?
Some teachers have proposed ideas for solving the issue, such as. Breninger, who proposes lowering the high thirty-three student upper limit on Honors and AP classes to a more manageable twenty-eight, stating, “I feel like it’s a big issue. Really, it’s an equity issue. So, some of the classes like the freshman and sophomore Honors Biology [Living Earth] and some Earth Sciences have forty students, one has thirty eight, and I have thirty two in one of my classes. So, I think we should make the Honors classes capped at twenty eight [students] like my academic classes, I think that would help.” She thinks that this would help solve what she considers the more dangerous of her concerns, as Carrillo’s labs were designed for twenty-eight students, so lowering the student cap would make the labs less congested and therefore safer and easier to supervise. She also believes that the smaller class sizes could allow her to help struggling students more easily, as there would be less people to deal with and run through the curriculum with, so she would have more time for individual discussions. In contrast to this, Mrs. Johnson thinks that the current system is working so far, but she says that if the student population continues to grow, the school should divert more money towards making new sections to house the students, rather than continuing to crowd students into evermore crowded and stuffy classrooms.
“I think it’s an issue because the students at the back of the class can get away with talking, and it’s quite distracting,” says Yihe Wang, a freshman at Maria Carrillo. Janis Vanags, another freshman, adds to this, claiming, “It can be a bit difficult moving within the classroom…for example, I have a few classes where some students have to sit by the counters because there’s no more desks.” As the issue of California’s overcrowding reaches new heights, many teachers and students become more and more concerned, and despite the many methods that could possibly alleviate the situation, the high student populations still remain a problem due to several, much more deeply rooted issues, which will take much more resources to resolve.