Roseville High school’s student population exceeded 2000 students at the beginning of this school year, bringing larger class sizes and additional class sections to a campus built for 1600.

The growth in enrollment overshot district administration’s projections early last year and was “unexpected,” according to Roseville Joint Unified High School District superintendent Ron Severson.

“All of our schools experienced some unexpected growth over the summer,” Severson said. “The impact for us is in class sizes. We have added staffing at most of our campuses because of the influx of new students.”

Roseville High School received their projections from the district for the next school year in January and used the projections to begin preparing their master schedule. Although initial projections predicted an increase in enrollment from the previous year, a wave of students registered late.

“You kind of get hit the last couple of weeks before school starts with a lot of people coming and registering for school,” principal David Byrd said. “About where we’ll be in January is about where we’re staffed at. So that means every school year starts really full, things start to kind of attrition and we start to kind of settle … By the end of the year, class sizes in many places feel really light and really small.”

RHS had an enrollment of around 2030 to 2040 students at the beginning of the year. As of September 14, enrollment dipped to 1993 students.

When the influx of students began to register later than expected, there wasn’t enough time to hire additional full-time staff to teach additional sections. As a result, this contributed to a demand for teachers in core classes to teach during their prep period in order to supplement for the increase in class sections. Currently, RHS math teacher Paul Stewart, PE teacher Greg Granucci and English teachers Amy Mowrer and Denise Weis are teaching during their prep periods.

“You only need two sections of English, two sections of math, [and] one section of PE,” Byrd said. “So it’s hard to find somebody who will come in and teach … just to teach one class of PE. People usually want a full time job. So that’s why we have teachers on their prep. We offer people that opportunity to make a little more money and teach an extra section.”

Despite assistance from school administration and the district in accommodating the extra students, there is an increased concern for a few teachers about the level of interaction they can have with students individually.

According to Mathematics department coordinator Levi Fletcher, math classes are averaging about 37 to 39 students, stretching his individual teaching time thin.

“I know that we want to, just as a school, try to improve success rates for students who are in their math classes. And math does tend to be one of the more challenging classes for students to pass, so it’s a bummer that the classes are getting so big,” Fletcher said. “Your time per student, it gets smaller and smaller. There’s less you can do individually when the classes get really large.”

With some campus facilities, Granucci experienced overcrowding.

“It kind of depends what facility we’re in,” Granucci said. “For example, if we’re in the pool, it gets a little tight in there. But if we’re doing something on the upper fields or on the football field, there’s enough space out there to handle everything.”

World language department coordinator Susan Hoffman noticed the growth of her department’s class sizes over the past few years, rather than one spike.

“I wouldn’t say that it’s like this year,” Hoffman said. “This has been going with us in world language for like three or four years. It’s not uncommon now to have a Spanish 1 or Spanish 2 class that has 38 or 39 students in it.”

Hoffman said an increase in students helps to provide for separate classes of varying levels of progression for foreign language. She said that combining certain levels of foreign language into a section can prove difficult to teach.

“It benefits world language because then they don’t have to have combo classes where they combine levels into one room,” Hoffman-Wells said. “There’s enough students that you can find Spanish 4 and AP Spanish.”

Visual and Performing Arts coordinator Patricia Leong said the influx of students is an opportunity for the department to offer additional classes and programs.

“The more students we have, the more opportunities we have to get students in the visual and performing arts classes,” Leong said. “We’re hoping that with the increase of students, we’ll have more offerings available for them.”

Although RHS received their initial projections from the district in January, the school was informed throughout the registration process that the initial projections underestimated the projected enrollment.

Science department coordinator Erin Granucci said the effects of the population spike are a common topic of discussion in the department and was informed about a possible influx of students last spring.

“I think the admin did a really good job letting us know that we could very well have a large amount of kids,” Granucci said. “As a science department, obviously there’s a lot of equipment, materials, textbooks, seating and that kind of stuff. So we, I think [we] did a good job preparing in case the numbers went up.”

According to Granucci, the Average Daily Attendance funding was not enough to cover the costs in providing the sufficient equipment and materials for the science department. Byrd provided additional assistance in prioritizing funding for certain departments.

“Mr. Byrd is very creative trying to find what teachers need,” Granucci said. “So that’s been a huge help, I think to all the departments. If there’s something a teacher needs he will do whatever he can to try and accommodate the teacher. Obviously, he’s kind of handcuffed. He only has so much money that he can spend.”