‘I can’t concentrate:’ Overpopulation in classes affects learning
Overpacked cafeteria
August 31, 2022
Edmond Public Schools’ growth of 697 students between Oct. 1, 2021, and Oct. 1, 2022, marks the largest one-year increase in the district’s history, begging the question of whether overpopulation in schools hinders classroom performance and efficiency.
At Edmond Santa Fe High School, students believe it does.
“My biggest class is AP government with 30 plus students,” junior Ivy Bennan said. “I can’t concentrate because there are many kids behind me that talk.”
With crowded hallways, classes are difficult to get to during passing period. An example of the overpopulation in Santa Fe is that it takes nearly five minutes to get from class to class during passing periods if you are going from one side of the school to the other.
“It’s scary to be there with so many people, people walk slowly and step on the back of my shoes often,” sophomore Lydia Hall said.
Edmond Santa Fe High School has 2,801 students in the school, the most out of Edmond’s three public high schools. Edmond North High School has 2,558 students and Edmond Memorial High School has 2,622 students.
With this many students, Edmond Santa Fe High School would need a considerable amount of faculty to be able to manage the students properly.
Santa Fe has a total of 150 faculty members including counselors, administration, teachers, and other parties that work for Santa Fe High School.
According to Walden University, classes with ‘30-40 students’ are harder to learn in because of noise and the inability of the teacher to be able to lecture, answer questions from students and manage classes. This leaves students with less personalized time to ask questions which makes for lower test scores.
“The less welcoming the class culture feels, making it even more difficult for students to engage, making them feel less comfortable to ask questions, and directly affecting their ability to process and retain information,” Mr. Beiri said.
Students are also losing the ability to join in on extracurricular activities due to the lack of spots in different clubs. In Mr. Beiri’s E-sports class, there are 24 gaming chairs but many more students that want to take the class.
“I feel like it’s a disservice to a lot of those students that they can’t be in, but there’s just physically no space,” Mr. Beiri said.
Ayden Enamamu Miller [9th] • Aug 31, 2022 at 8:58 am
Well E-Sports being jam packed is pretty obvious If i didn’t do off-soccer i would have went for E-Sports.
On another note it’s a shame how for example [Academic Team] is lacking
1 freshman for an team. And when i did this at Heartland there were 30 of us and now there is just 8 people in A-Team.
[P.S If any freshmen are seeing this you should totally join we need one more to be a chapter]
People just sometimes underlook over clubs and don’t give it a try [It doesn’t even have any fees AND its available to BOTH people with or w/o a 7th hour.
To top this off I would guess sometimes there is problem with placement in IA/AP Courses which people are entitled to if they enrolled.
Some people are likely not able to get that college credit or pursue what they REALLY love to do all because there just isn’t one more seat [That or your whole schedule shatters into 2801 pieces.]
I’m not gonna lie I am not sure how EPS isn’t bonding EVEN MORE classrooms then they are right now.
Tl;Dr I feel terrible for the people unable to pursue AP because of this and the people that don’t give other clubs a chance to be known more.
Ayden Enamamu Miller [9th] • Aug 31, 2022 at 9:02 am
Oh and one more thing I am on first lunch and as soon as the 3rd hour bell rings you literally need to shove and run to make it to the line fast enough to not be cut because the lines have bad moderation I can’t even count the times I’ve been cut if im too slow.
Santa Fe is cool and all so far but the capacity problems is whats really holding it back from using full power!