The concrete walls of Piedmont High School’s classrooms cannot stretch. Designed for 25 desks, some rooms now hold 30— leaving limited space for students, especially in the class of 2027, to move and learn comfortably.
“When I started teaching here the average class size was 24 students,” said AP Literature teacher Elise Marks. “Now we’re looking at 28-32 students per class, they aren’t going to have enough room to put their backpacks on the floor.”
English Department head Mercedes Foster said that every department gets allocated a certain number of Full Time Equivalents (FTE’s) which determines how many teachers the department can have. With more funding there can be more FTEs which means more classes.
“Every year we always end up having more money than we thought we would at the beginning of the year,” Foster said. “The cost for the most expensive possible class is $31,000. Most years we end the year with an extra 200,000 so that’s like five more potential classes.”
Instead students, particularly the class of 2027, are being put in fewer and larger classes. This not only affects the classroom environment during the year but also prevents students from being able to reorganize their schedules. Additionally, Foster said that dropping and adding classes becomes incredibly difficult.
“It’s cleaner when we can determine the master schedule before the year begins,” Foster said. “The stress for the kids of adjusting to a new class with a new teacher is hard, and it’s because we couldn’t make these changes quicker.”
These large classes impact the experiences of both teachers and students.
“I think that English, especially the classes, need to be smaller because a lot of kids learn differently. The kids who thrive in English can create conversations that go over people’s heads,” an PHS sophomore said.
Physical space is also becoming a problem.
“The seating arrangements are really tight, you feel pretty squashed and close together,” sophomore Will Hinman said.
Marks said due to these larger class sizes teachers cannot pay as much attention to individual students or cater their classes to everyone’s needs. This leaves students out and creates a more chaotic and negative classroom environment.
“Kids misbehave in class because they don’t understand,” said the PHS sophomore. “It’s also hard for kids that can’t be as involved in class when they feel lost. Often that turns into judgment towards people who push their understanding.”
It’s also impacting the teachers who have the responsibility of looking after potentially ten more students.
“I literally have higher blood pressure this year. It’s a problem because of the stress of teaching so many classes, some of which have over 30 students,” Foster said.
Marks said that having just a few more students in each class builds up fast.
“If every single class has five more kids than the old average, in effect you have a whole extra class worth of papers to grade,” Marks said. “I can’t give anywhere near the feedback I gave in my earlier years here.”
Marks also said that student teacher relationships are diminishing.
“I have students leaving at the end of year and as they are walking out of my class I realize ‘wow, I barely got to know them,” Marks said.
Foster said the need to have more English classes to therefore reduce class sizes is complicated. Adding more English courses will limit FTEs allocated to other parts of the humanities department (namely electives) which are seeing an increase in enrollment for the upcoming year.
“I don’t want to have to give up an elective,” Foster said.
Foster said she is working to get more FTEs for the Department.
“The class of 2027, two years in a row, got screwed over. It’s like a punishment even though in the big picture we were trying to alleviate problems,” Foster said.
Hinman said it will be additionally challenging with the junior year coming up.
“The fact that my grade is going to be experiencing these larger class sizes again next year kind of sucks,” Hinman said. “Especially for junior year, that’s going to be the hardest year of high school and having a class with 32 people is going to be very challenging.”
The PHS sophomore said it is an opportunity for growth in student development and curiosity regardless of the unideal circumstance.
“Having larger classes can be a good thing because students can take initiative in their own learning,” they said. “No one is there to check in on you, you need to seek it out.”
