Student body grows, struggles stay same

As with the start of every school year at CVHS, we start a bit bumpy. But this year has been more hectic, from an increased student body size of about 100 more students to almost 200 classes at max capacity. This year has physically been more crowded and tougher to navigate than ever.

This year upperclassmen have faced an increase of struggle in requesting schedule changes, due to the limited amount of AP classes and teachers. For example, many students did not make it into APEL this year, and some were even told that the classes had negative spaces in them. Another senior English class, ERWC, was also said to have no remaining spots for students. Lit and Film only had one spot left.

Several teachers have had to ask for more desks to compensate for their increased class sizes, or hope that someone drops the class to fit their Castro Valley Teachers Association (CVTA) contracts, which caps classes at 33 students.

Other students have stated that they were not given required classes, like government and economics, which are graduation requirements for all Trojans. Though this may have only been a scheduling issue, it doesn’t help that classes are already filled, making it impossible even to transfer in. 

Counselor Christopher Tsang stated, “The ‘over-enrollment’ and unavailability for the required classes of government and econ, are due to students enrolling in AP Economics and needing a semester of government to graduate.”

Classes such as APES and APAH are favorites at CVHS and are always full since they are each only taught by one teacher. This year though, students have felt that it was increasingly hard to get into these classes. Several seniors have stated that they didn’t get into APAH even though they applied as sophomores for their junior year, and again never got a spot in the class after applying as juniors for their senior year. Schedule makers seem to have skipped over their seniority and double seniority from previous applications. 

Tsang commented, “The students have more power than us [counselors] in creating schedules, the schedules are made by Aeries not by counselors. Counselors can only encourage you to take a certain class, and move you to available classes for your schedule when requested.” 

Freshmen also are having a similar struggle. This year a waitlist has been implemented for students trying to take vocal ensemble, CVHS’s zero-period choir class.

Understandably, counselors are overworked during this time of year with constant requests to fix student schedules, find solutions for student requests, and work to implement our newest policies within CVUSD.

That being said, students this year are struggling to figure out their schedules and graduation requirements, with no help from an increased student body size, and many maxed-out class periods.

School enrollment data:

• 2021-22 school year: 2699 total students
• 2022-23 school year: 2799 total students
• 2023-24 school year: 2870 total students
• 2024-25 school year: 2904 total students