According to the new principal, Alexander Duncan III, the school has increased by about 400 to 500 students in the last five years alone . With that kind of growth, the administration faces the challenge of maintaining what is true and historic about the school while also creating space for continued growth.
“I am always, as a leader, thinking about what is next,” Principal Duncan said. “I am always planning for [an increase of students], so I am currently thinking about the 2027 and 2028 academic schedule, so I can think ‘How do you prepare in the event that there is additional enrollments, and how programs will get large?’ We [might] see more students interested in International Baccalaureate (IB) because we have a very very successful IB program. How can we account for more growth? That is my job as a principal.”
At the school, the freshman class is the third-largest class at the school. The largest class is our junior class, followed by seniors and sophomores. Each year, the trend depends on the incoming class to the IB program.
“You have to take into account the amount of students that we’re serving,” Principal Duncan said. “For example, I just had a meeting and we were talking about homecoming tickets. How do you organize the tickets, because we are trying to make it something that will have the least impact on school operations, because we are trying to sell homecoming to almost 3000 students. At the end of the day, whenever you are thinking about an initiative, project, idea or activity, you have to account for the large number of students that we serve. It is a great problem to have, as it presents a number of different opportunities for us to get creative.”
The increase in population has benefits, providing more diversity and ideas, but also creates a bigger space to share learning and opportunities.
“I think [the school] is an amazing place that is creating an opportunity for our students to not just be entrepreneurs and members of the community at large here, but it is also preparing you all to go out into the international world and participate and compete in ways that I do not know other schools always prepare their students for,” Principal Duncan said.
Senior Natalia Carrasquillo has attended the school all four years of high school. Carrasquillo has participated in many aspects of school culture, including Advanced Placement (AP), International Baccalaureate, varsity sports and many clubs.
Since she was a freshman, Carrasquillo has noticed a difference in the class population as her classes feel chock-full now. For her, it has impacted the individual attention she receives from staff because they have a higher volume of students, making it harder to get the closer attention that many students value.
“I think in a way this impacted my classes with getting more of a one on one connection with some teachers because of how many people are in each class,” Carrasquillo said. “It also impacts my focus in class because sometimes there are side conversations that people have that can take away from being able to hear my teachers.”
When it comes to the level of attention students have received with increasing class size, Carrasquillo has also seen a big difference in other aspects of the school, such as scheduling, counseling access and competition in sports.
“In my experience, I saw this impact scheduling with some classes having less than 15 students and some having over 30 students with the same teacher,” Carrasquillo said. “I also saw impacts this past sports tryouts season, as there were around 90 students trying out for the field hockey team, which is the most that have ever tried out thus far. I saw a lot of students who got cut or weren’t placed on their ideal teams due to the volume of students trying out, which was at an all-time high for the program.”
With an increase in school population, it has also impacted the implementation of school policies such as dismissal, Yondr pouches and GP.
“I think that this has affected schools, especially with the newly implemented phone rules,” Carrasquillo said. “The students that had been in the building prior to phone restrictions that were set in place more heavily in the middle of my sophomore year weren’t making phones much of a problem and use felt more controlled. Though with new students coming into school during my junior year and now this year, the phone use has become more of a problem, because the amount of students who won’t disconnect from their phones during class has become increasingly higher.”
The conjunction of school policies and the size increase has created issues for the new school year, but with time, the transition will ease, and we will adapt.
“It is an exciting time, it is fun for me when you think about it,” Principal Duncan said. “I do not see things as challenges, I like to see them as opportunities. [This year is] a great opportunity for us to figure out how we create more space for young people to explore their interests and select whatever opportunities that they have aspirations of being a part of.”
