SRHS faces a plethora of problems

Santa Rosa High School has always had one of the biggest student populations in the city. Saying that it has a lot of kids this year, though, would be a huge understatement. With 2,021 students it is the largest school out of all the Sonoma County High Schools.
 
To break this down by grade size, there are 577 freshmen, 522 sophomores, 438 juniors, and 484 seniors. A population like this comes with pros and cons. A large student population is good for the budget because the school receives money for every kid in attendance. So in that case, the more the better. However, when it comes to things like class sizes, this is a big issue, especially with freshmen classes. There can be 50 people in an English class and 60 to 70 people in a P.E. class. This makes it harder for the teachers to do their job and in some classrooms students are left without desks.
 
The science teachers sign a contract when they start teaching that says that if a class has more than 33 kids after 16 days of school, the teacher receives $10 a day for each extra student. This rule is in place because, with all the experiments and equipment used in a science class, it would be dangerous to have too many kids. While some teachers would be glad to keep the extra kids in exchange for the money, others, like Ms. Simerly, who had an honors biology class with over 50 kids, had a different opinion.
 
"I don’t want the money, I want students to be able to learn better," said Simerly when asked about the rule.
 
Her class was soon split into two science classes, which caused many people’s schedules to change. Some students have already gotten completely new schedules and with two new Freshmen P.E. classes opening, and several junior classes being split, a lot more will be changed in the near future.
 
With all these schedule changes being made it’s put a lot of pressure on the schools counseling office. Due to budget cuts, SRHS has lost a part time support counselor. At this time we are fully staffed with four full-time counselors, but the student/counselor ratio is 500 to one.
 
"It has been busier because we have more students and less counselors than in years past," says counseling secretary Toni Noonan. This means that it probably would not be good to ask for a schedule change right now, most classes are full or overfull and counselors still aren’t sure who will be moving or where they’ll be moving to. Although Santa Rosa High does have the biggest population in the county this year, it remains unclear whether or not it is a good thing.