If you think you have a lot of large classes this year, you are not alone.  According to a recent email survey conducted by The Breeze, the average SBRHS student has has 3.5 classes with over 25 students in them.  Students also only have an average of 1 class with 20 to 25 students and around 1.5 classes with less than 20 students.  It should be no surprise to many that classes this year on average are big, but what has caused this to happen?

Mr. Laurence is the content coordinator of math and former acting vice principal.  Although three of his four classes have under 25 students, his precalculus level nine class has 31 students.  “I think this year we do have some larger classes than in the past.  I do think some of that can be attributed to  the new building.  We do offer some slots for school choice and in the past, more students would leave to go to Coyle or Stang or a private school.  A lot of students are staying here or want to come here via school choice.  We have more students in the school.”  Laurence said this year the school has around 1056 students.

Laurence also stated, “When you make a schedule, if there are a bunch of kids that all want one class, that is offered one time, in one area of study, they are all going to track towards that same schedule, which can push them all into one class in another department.  So even if I offer two sections of something, some students might not be able to fit in the one that is smaller.”

Say for example many people in your grade wanted a particular math class that only ran one period.  Now imagine that these same people want to take a lot of the same English, world language, science and history classes.  Now that large math class is forcing others to also be large as well because only particular periods of the other classes will be able to fit for students in the math class.   That is what happened a lot this year, which would explain why students have more small and large classes than medium sized ones

Laurence says that as a teacher, class size does not affect his teaching method as much.  While smaller class sizes allow him more one-on-one time with students, large class sizes allow for more collaboration and class participation.

Laurence said that usually with people changing classes, class sizes usually will stabilize when the year is in motion

Whether you like it or not, large class sizes are likely going to remain the normal at SBRHS.