California’s high school student average is about 1,481 students per high school, and according to staff, there are about 2,700 students attending SJHS. That’s almost twice as many students, but is this a problem for the staff at SJHS? 

One of the attendance clerks, Ms. Arellano, has her opinions on how crowded SJHS is and how it affects the attendance office.

“There’s only one high school so it’s pretty hard to just, you know, have all these students and only two people here in attendance especially,” said attendance clerk Ms. Arellano. “Like I said, it gets a little overwhelming sometimes because we try to get back to every single person and parent and also students to help you guys in any way we can, so definitely.”

 Ms. Arellano also has possible solutions to control how crowded the campus is by building another high school or even increasing the staff at SJHS.

“I would say another high school would be real cool, definitely,” she mentioned. “That way, you know, we have more time to put our focus on parents and issues they might have, that way also students who, you know, there’s not so many. Or more employees, you know, that way we can help also parents,” Ms. Arellano explained.

Mrs. Robinson, a Spanish teacher here at SJHS, has a slightly different perspective on how crowded the campus is. She believes that the classroom sizes and student-to-teacher ratios themselves are mainly the problem in how packed the school is.

”When it comes to the number of students on campus we have 2,700 students. I don’t really think so, it doesn’t seem like we’re too crowded,” began Mrs. Robinson. “But when it comes to those students being in the classrooms, then it does feel very crowded. It is not a good size. The instructional quality that students are getting when classes are that big is not good,” she finished.

Mr. Carmona, one of the Counselors here at SJHS, has a personal approach to the subject of how the school’s population affects not only him but other counselors and staff as well.

“As a counselor or just as a person, my mindset is that I want to help all of our students, so it’s really hard, you know. Some students have that perception of like ‘oh I wanna meet with my counselor one-on-one,” Mr. Carmona stated. “Realistically, that can’t really happen because there’s only 7 of us, and right now, there’s five of us, and there’s about 2,700 students. So it is kinda challenging, but as a school and I think as counselors, we have a system set up to help students.”

The subject of building another high school, as mentioned by Ms. Arellano, was brought up. Here is Mr. Carmona’s perspective on it.

 “Another high school would be great. I don’t know if that’s, you know, financially possible and stuff like that, but I think that’s great. Our community is growing, so maybe in the future? I don’t know how near in the future or far away in the future, but I think that would be a neat idea.” Mr. Carmona stated.

The staff here at SJHS have their respective opinions on how the population on campus affects them individually as well as their peers. Although a solution is unknown at the time, maybe with more recognition on the topic, the voices of the staff will be heard, and possibly even students can speak out about the subject too.

For Tiger Media Network, this is Joseph Castaneda and Zeb Gibson.