Three times more WY students took a 7th class instead of an instructional support this year. While students are aiming higher in their academics, an obstacle arose when the amount of students in these classes grew in size. Most of these classes happen to be single offering classes, or there’s only one teacher available to teach it.

Some classes take priority when it comes to reducing sizes.

“I have always tried to reduce the numbers for English because I want students to be able to write more, and teachers have to correct less papers,” says principal Joyce Kenner.

The average class size for English is 27.1 students.

According to Class Size Matters, an organization that discloses the benefits of smaller class sizes, large classes can make learning for some students harder, as there are more kids for teachers to manage and less time to give every student the same amount of attention. Students are more likely to pay attention and finish classwork when there are fewer students, and teachers have more time to grade more and help students.

Many students say they prefer smaller classes over crowded ones.

“When there’s a smaller class size, you can have more intelligent discussions,” said Ayrika Hall 16’. “When teachers want you to talk for participation points, everyone’s just trying to speak and there’s too many people talking about nonsense because everyone just wants to get their opinions across.”

“It’s tough because the school is trying to do more with less and less,” says Jay Rehak, WY English teacher and Chicago Teacher Union representative. He reminds others to do what is needed to give everyone the best chance to be successful as individuals and as a school.

To make sure that programming doesn’t get out of order again, Kenner ensured that the administration’s goal for next year is to dive deeper into the programming system to make sure that the numbers balance out more than they did this year.