Students work to surmount scheduling struggles on a more crowded campus

When March rolled around last year and schedule preferences were made, senior Thomas Ishikawa requested a free sixth period because of conflicts with baseball. However, upon receiving his schedule this year, the school said that he had to take seven classes during his final year in high school.

“I took government over the summer so that I could have an open sixth just second semester, since that’s when baseball is,” Ishikawa said.

When Ishikawa received his schedule, he discovered that he had a free first period second semester rather than the sixth period.

Similarly, many students started off the year plagued by numerous scheduling conflicts and endless amounts of frustration.

Although his situation was eventually solved, Ishikawa had to work outside of the guidance department to find a way to switch.

“One of my friends had the same exact schedule that I wanted and then he wanted the schedule I had so we did was we went in and switched all our classes,” Ishikawa said.

Personally searching for other students who would swap classes with him was the only way he could adapt his schedule for his extracurricular activities.

These scheduling conflicts stem from recent budget cuts and an increase in the overall student population. This has caused the class sizes to increase.

Over the past seven years, class sizes have oscillated to about 330 students on average—the current freshman class of 371 far exceeds this number.

According to guidance counselor Eileen Allen, the school bore an influx of new-to-district students in addition to the expected large graduating class from Redwood Middle School.

Due to this increase, many underclassmen have had difficulty switching between science and math honors classes since there are fewer available seats in honors and those in regular classes have an even harder time trying to move up.

AP and honors classes have a similar problem, as these classes are completely filled to the brink. Students must swap with each other specifically in order to transfer.

However, despite all the difficulties faced, most students are willing to find solutions themselves, such as Ishikawa, or make compromises in order to get the classes they need.

Nevertheless, the guidance department considers this school year a success regarding placing everyone into the right classes.

“Folks have all been able to have classes they want,” assistant principal Brian Safine said. “Some students want not only the classes they need for graduation, but they want the periods to fit perfectly and we can never promise that.”

Likewise, 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.”

One of these students, junior Sanjna Verma, had tried numerous times to enroll in ceramics in order to fulfill her visual arts requirement for the past few weeks without success. She has been unable to enter the class because it was already completely full, with a waiting list of more than 50 students.
Although Verma’s schedule did not accommodate her interest in ceramics, she worked with guidance to switch into Art 1 instead.

She had to make a compromise, but in the end, she will be able to fulfill her visual arts requirement as planned.