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Some courses will cut back or even stop being offered next school year due to low student enrollment or staffing issues. For a few other classes, students were advised to consider an alternative course due to over-enrollment.
Counselors notified students who signed up for United States History Honors, Advanced Placement Comparative Government, Geology, Environmental Science, AP Art History, Photography 1, Photography 2 and Advanced Photography that the classes were being cancelled due to under-enrollment or staffing issues. Other students who signed up for over-enrolled classes such as piano lab, physiology or Comedy and Satire were notified that they may need to sign up for an alternative course. They were given the opportunity to decide on another course before Arena, according to assistant principal for pupil services Holly Giles. “I met up with each department head,” she said. “We have finished redistributing all the students affected by over-enrollment.” Department heads and Giles cancelled some of the Visual and Performing Arts courses such as AP Art History due to too few student sign-ups. "We review the offerings and the number of students,” Giles said. “We check to see if aclass can sustain itself and if we can build on the class. Some classes had low enrollment and some didn’t have a teacher.” Assistant principal Janet Tse added to the explanation of the process. “If the enrollment of a course is low, the class may be cancelled,” Tse said. “After we went through all the course request lists, we realized that there were not enough students signed up for some of these classes. We set the number of classes according to the number of students signed up for it and the teachers availableto teach the class.” There were more than 100 students affected by over-enrolled courses, approximately 50 that were affected by under-enrolled courses, and many additional students affected by the cancellation of classes without a teacher, such as photography.These students were notified of the change approximately a month after turning in their course request sheets, when they were encouraged by counselors to signup for an alternative class. In most over-enrolled classes, the cut-off for notification was determined by alpha-rotation. In other cases, student credit needs took precedence. "We made sure to prioritize," Tse explained. "We put students who needed to take the course first, and then figured out the rest of the alpha-rotation." Most students found the sudden change inconvenient, but understood the circumstances. “Of course I feel a bit peeved that I couldn’t get the class Iwanted,” sophomore prospective physiology student Mabel Fung said. “It’s an inconvenience, but it’s fair that it’s based on alpha-rotation. I know that I’m not being singled out and will do fine in physics.” As for classes with too few signed up, there is not a set cut-off number of students per class, according to Giles. “There isn’t a defined cut-off,” Gilesexplained. “Looking at the class tally, our goal is to have 25 or more students per class. When the number is lower, we look at the possibility of closing the class, unless that specific class is state-mandated.” Giles added that the specific classes cancelled also depended on factors such as teaching loads balanced with class priority and low enrollment. “In some instances, we’d have one teacher with too many sections,” Giles said. “It became difficult to meet the requests of students at the bottom of the rotation. That’s when we had to inform them of the possibility of not being able to get into that class.” Other courses such as Advanced Photography, Photography 1 and Photography 2 were cancelled due to temporary staff leaves, disregarding the popularity of theclass, according to photography and architecture teacher Julian Pollak. “Eventhough there was high demand for these classes, they were cancelled due to theschool’s decision not to fund a replacement teacher,” he said. When students were informed of affected courses in late April by an announcement in registry, many students in cancelled under-enrolled classes were irritated by the inconvenience. "I am frustrated that the class I wanted is closed," prospective Advanced Photography student sophomore Nicolas Bloise said. "Photography is a field that I am interested in. I was really looking forward to the class. Now I can't go any further with my photography ambition." However,in ninth grade English and math, sections of classes were cancelled due to the impact of budget limitations. These classes had been held to a smaller enrollment and now will increase, according to Tse. “In past years, the maximum number of students per ninth grade English and math classes was around twenty students,” she said. “Now, the max is 25 students per class, which results in fewer classes.” The lower number of classes in itself will not result in staff without classes, according to Tse. “We will not have a staff surplus after cutting these classes,” Tse said. “We have some teachers retiring, some taking a sabbatical, et cetera.” The process of canceling classes when teacher is going on leave was explained by Visual and Performing Arts department head Teresa Bookwalter. “Generally, teachers going on sabbatical are replaced by another teacher,” she said.“However, due to the current budget crisis, we were unable to fund for areplacement teacher (for Mr.Pollak). We had enough money from Proposition H to fund a replacement teacher for the architecture program. As for the photography courses, we will have to wait until the year after when he comes back.” However, the long-term size of the Lowell staff may be affected by the current financial difficulties our school faces. “Our funding has affected student course needs by cutting the staff,” Giles said. “Everything is connected to the budget.We’re doing the best we can with the staff that we have. We hope that we can regain our staff numbers by next year to better meet student needs.” |
