Illustration by Kai Henthorn-Iwane
This year, Berkeley High School (BHS) was taken by surprise when enrollment totaled 3,007 students rather than the projected 2,887. 120 unexpected students made the difference between the school’s target average class size of 28 and its current figure of 28.9.
The 28-student target is an objective of the Berkeley Schools Excellence Project, a parcel tax that provides substantial funds for BHS and the school district. While the 869-student freshman class is significantly larger than the last, it is just nineteen students over the district’s projection.
What came as a greater surprise were the fifty to seventy current BHS sophomores, juniors, and seniors whom the district expected to attend Berkeley Technology Academy (BTA) based on their age and demonstrated need for academic support.
Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD) Admissions Manager Francisco Martínez said BTA currently has only 45 students in total. If more students do not choose to transfer after the first quarter or the first semester, Superintendent Donald Evans may consider shifting some of the district’s resources from BTA to BHS. Martínez said BUSD also expected a few more students to enter Independent Study, and believes some students may choose to do so later on in the year.
Martínez said that BHS is allotted a specified amount of Full Time Equivalents (FTE), or staff positions, based on projected enrollment. It is the school’s responsibility to distribute staffing across classes. According to Martínez, with the current average class size at 28.9, over enrolled classes are often more a result of balancing problems than lack of funding.
One BHS teacher affected by over-enrollment was French teacher Jennifer Wray. At the beginning of the school year, Wray had a French IV class with 38 students. According to Wray, the class size was set to be thirty when the school was making the master schedule but increased due to predictable amounts of incoming students from Ecole Bilingue de Berkeley, a local private French bilingual school, and Francophone exchange students who transferred into the class after the August and September placement tests.
Wray explained that the level of involvement she would like to have with her students’ speaking skills often becomes quickly unattainable in classes with more than twenty or twenty-five students.
“When I asked a custodian for extra desks, he told me that there was a problem and we were lacking desks,” said Wray.
Eventually, according to Guidance Counselor Terrance Christianson, the district funded an additional 1.0 FTE at the request of BHS Principal Erin Schweng, which allowed administrators to open a second section of French IV. Changes such as this one have been inconvenient for students and staff as well as faculty who are forced to take in new students a few weeks into the school year.
In other over enrolled classes such as AP Computer Science Principles and Politics and Power, a number of students transferred to other classes within the first week of school.
Computer Science Teacher Ira Holston said that while he was disappointed that the school had decided to make only one section of his class, he was also relieved that he would no longer have to change rooms due to seven periods of computer science scheduled during the regular school day.
Holston also said that over enrollment likely means more revenue for the school in the future since state funding for schools is on a per student basis. An increase in overall funding could mean more room in the BHS budget to expand course offerings.
“What I’m trying to do here is build a Computer Science Department,” Holston said. In the past six years, BHS has expanded its computer science course offerings from a single section to seven sections of five different classes. Given this expansion, Holston said he is okay with temporary setbacks for students such as over enrollment. Holston and Martínez both expressed the belief that the short term inconvenience of over enrollment will be offset by future benefits.
Christianson said balancing raises questions of what changes may help promote student success the most. “Are we helping the students that are already at the top [academically] or are we helping the students that really need the help,” is one such question, according to Christianson.
For example, Christianson and his colleagues recently selected to open a new class of Digital Photography in order to allow forty or fifty students to enroll in an art class rather than open a second section of AP Physics where the current section is over enrolled by ten students.
Counselors continue to modify student class schedules in an effort to balance class sizes.