Middle schools

Overcrowding is even impacting the middle schools, technically the “least” crowded of all district buildings.

From Amy Torrens, principal at Tahoma Middle School:

Our class size has always been fairly big (31/32).  However, the more students we have, the less possible it is to schedule “perfectly” so some classes are now at 33 or 34.  This will continue to increase as our enrollment grows even though the fire marshall has limited some of our rooms to 32…

The daily experience is simply more crowding throughout the day.  In the morning kids go to the gym, and the 620 kids fill it up.  The hallways are crowded before and after school so it is difficult to open lockers and get through the hallways.  The lunch room is packed with literally no extra seats.  In one class, we have had to have a student sit at the teacher desk because there was no room for another student desk.  PE classes can have up to 45 students in them (and two classes run at the same time so we have 90 kids participating in the gym at the same time).

Some of the resources that we are or will be giving up are the following:

1. Our second computer lab will become a classroom. (and possibly both computer labs)
2. Our cafeteria does not have enough capacity for the current students so we are dependent on absences to fit them in.  Any more students and we will have to add another lunch which will add the expense of more supervision, cafeteria staff, etc.
3. We don’t have enough room in our auditorium to hold all of our students at once.  We are dependent on absences. If our enrollment increases, we will not be able to use our auditorium for all school events.
4. We have had to pull para staff from classrooms to provide adequate supervision for the growing number of students at lunch times.

Teaching and Learning has been maintained due to excellent teachers.  We continue to add resources to support the increased enrollment, and our teachers use engaging strategies to make sure all students are participating even when there is large class size.  But because TMS only has two rooms left, we will possibly have to move away from a teaming model so that our classrooms can be used all day without teachers staying in their classroom during their planning period (of course they have no work rooms to go in to like the high school and junior high; they literally would be hanging out in the lunch room.)