With the start of a new school year at Hellgate, there has been concern among students and  staff about the size of classes.  Many students have been unsatisfied with their schedule, and the staff at Hellgate have been trying to meet those needs while meeting their own requirements. 

With numbers growing every year, Hellgate’s administration has been trying to work through the requests of students attempting to get into their desired classes while also following their obligations as the administration. Many high demand required classes have been unavailable to be switched into due to large interest, and changes have not been able to be processed because the classes are already at their limit. 

The typical limit for a class is 30, and since classes have started to fill up pretty quickly, the demonstrated interest in a class is way higher than the seats available. “It’s contractual,” said Principal Judson Miller. “It’s not a law, but it’s a very hard limit that we can’t go over 30.” The administration and counselors have been working hard to get these issues fixed in the first couple of weeks of school. 

The major reason they try to cap it at 30 is for students to have the ability to perform efficiently in classes and get the help they need. “The idea is if there are fewer people in the class, there’ll be more attention paid, per teacher,” said Miller. According to Miller, the rule of 30 kids per class has been the same for at least 9 years, maybe even more.

He said the result of the budget cuts “is that our class sizes went up on an average.” The staffing for many of these classes has been affected by it, and the current staff can’t enroll all the people who signed up for those classes to compensate for the lack of new hires. “Our maximum didn’t change. What changed is my ability to hire more people to address it,” said Miller.

Though a few teachers and staff members did leave last year, Hellgate hasn’t deliberately cut any teachers from the staff, which still had a small effect on the distribution of students per class.

Though it may not seem ideal, Hellgate does not plan on hiring any new staff as of right now, mainly due the budget cuts. They have successfully been able to switch people’s schedules to meet their quota, without there being any major issues.