The year 2017 has started off as an exceptional year of growth for Falls Church High School. With the addition of the new trailer classes, located behind the door in the cafeteria, we also have new teachers and new students. Every year Fairfax County has to make an estimate of how many kids they believe will enroll in each school. This year, around April, the estimated amount of kids was 1,999, but once the school year actually started and a full list of students was finally printed out, they realized that they had 2,109, which was 110 more students than expected. To help teach these new students, two new teachers, Mr. Winter (Social Studies) and Ms. Soriano (English), were hired after the start of the year. Not only that, but more students keep filing in, even to this day. Because we have so many students and teachers now, the school had to compromise and readjust some students’ schedules. The plan is to fill up the classes until they were allowed to bring in more teachers. It’s a very tedious process but it is something that is mandatory for everyone’s safety. The overall goal is to create as little disruption as possible; they see which classes you’re in and they try to keep you with the same teacher, but a different period.
These changes required the addition of new sections of pre-existing classes. Some new classes added are: English 10 Honors, Algebra 2 Honors, English 12 Dual Enrollment, ELD (English Language Development), U.S. VA, English 10, and Econ and Personal Finance.
Ms. Grenfell, Falls Church’s Director of Student Services, has told us all about the new developments to our school. “I’m excited for more teachers to the lower classes, to give more support to our students,” she said when asked how she felt about our school’s expansion. “We all put a lot of effort into research for new staffing. We do these things in order to benefit all of our students, so that way nobody will feel left out of anything,”