“I didn’t know where to sit,” senior Brandon Galvan said
about his first day of school this year. “I was stressing just to
find an open seat.”
Students like Galvan have found it challenging to navigate
overcrowded classrooms compared to the smaller classroom
sizes we’ve had in the years since the pandemic, especially in
required subjects such as math, English and science.
Many think the larger classes are because we’ve had a
surge of students joining our school; each year our Fresh-
man Class seems to get bigger and bigger. Unfortunately, the
truth is quite the opposite.
According to Tualatin High School Principal Michael
Dellerba, our school district is 1,100 students down from
previous years from K-12. At first, that might seem like a
good thing; fewer students means smaller and less-crowded
classrooms, but having fewer students also means less fund-
ing.
“Education was going to be funded at $9.9 billion, and so
TTSD kind of knows what percentage of that is going to be
based on our enrollment because that’s how Oregon school
funds work. It’s based on enrollment,” Dellerba stated.
With less funding comes the need for staffing reductions.
This not only means we have a higher student-to-teacher
ratio this year, but also that the school needs to allocate re-
sources and manage the number of classes offered, depend-
ing on what students are taking.
Galvan’s experience on the first day of school summarizes
the impact of these changes: overcrowded classrooms. He
couldn’t transfer into the geology class he wanted because it
was already full, a common problem for students trying to
access the courses they need.
“We had to make decisions if we wanted to run one class
of 40 or run two classes of 20, which means other classes
are going to be bigger. So it turns into kind of a shell game
across all courses,” Dellerba added.
Dellerba expressed his willingness to request more staff-
ing from the district to address the issue of overcrowded
classrooms, but he emphasized that it ultimately depended
on what the district could give to the school. Tualatin High
School faces challenges in balancing classroom sizes, course
availability and funding constraints.
Any increase of class sizes will feel like an adjustment,
especially for teachers trying to do the job well.
“One of my mantras is to work from within, not from
without,” Dellerba said. “Like, what resources have I been
allocated, and how do we make the best model possible?…
We lost 10 and a half teachers last year. You’re definitely go-
ing to feel it.”
