Freshman Nikhil Chakravarthy expected to encounter a new set of rules and an expanded workload in high school. He did not, however, foresee the packed classes and cramped halls.

“One time I was walking to class, and it was like Disneyland on Christmas Day,” he said.

As the school year starts to unfold, returning students are noticing that hallways are more crowded and lunch lines are much longer. Indeed, the school population has increased. Over the past seven years, class size have averaged about 330 student—the current freshman class of 371 far exceeds this number.

Before school even began, Link Crew experienced the impact of the increase in students.

“I definitely felt it with Link,” guidance counselor and Link Crew co-director Eileen Allen said. “But we had so many people that wanted to be Link Crew leaders, so it worked out as there were enough leaders to have a decent amount of freshmen in their groups.”

According to Allen, in addition to the large graduating class from Redwood Middle School, which the administration had anticipated, the school bore an influx of freshmen who were new to the district.
Many factors could explain the large freshman population. For one, the economic downturn may make public schools seem more financially attractive than their private school counterparts.

However, according to Allen, the population boom may be short-lived, as Saratoga’s elementary school enrollment rates continue to plummet.

According to registrar Jeanne Jamieson, one more freshman English courses was added in accordance to the new student population.

“The only difficult thing I have seen in terms of scheduling is that some classes are super popular, especially electives like Journalism 1 or Ceramics 1,” Allen said. “Managing with getting students the classes they want has been tough because it’s hard to explain to new students that we can only accommodate to a certain extent.”

It is not only classes sizes that are feeling the effects of the increased student population but also throughout the other students, who are noticing the difference.

“The only difference is that there were more students around me, especially really small ones,” senior Sarah Lum said. “I didn’t really notice how many freshmen there were until I was crowded in the hallways by them.”