You may have noticed that there are more people in your first period class than usual. State law prohibits class sizes from exceeding 32 students, but classrooms will remain packed, maybe until the end of the month, while the Seattle School District takes advantage of a legal loophole: it has until October 1 to get classes 32 or under.

There are currently 1,772 students enrolled at Garfield High School for this fall, 200 students above the legal limit. About 100 of those students are expected to drop out before school year starts, or move to private school, Running Start or another school district. The 100 students still left at Garfield will push its total population 6.6 percent above the legal limit.

“All students will have a full schedule by the first day, if they requested it,” said Ms. Hust, a counselor at Garfield. The extra students and promised full schedules will push the average class size to over 32, the legal limit for one class. On September 9, Seattle high school principals will meet to discuss which school is has the most overfilled classes. The district will examine the numbers and allocate extra teachers to the most deprived schools.

Much has happened since the much-publicized teacher layoffs last spring. The Seattle School District gave GHS two teachers: Lyle Sheen, an ex-Garfield teacher has come back to teach health and physical education; Allen Carpenter, who was a student teacher at Garfield three years ago, has come back to Garfield to teach either math or science. The PTSA raised more than $45,000 this summer, enough to hire another math teacher, who has not been named. In addition, the Seattle School District kicked in money to hire another Language Arts teacher and another Social Studies teacher. The Social Studies position has been filled by Garfield legend Jim Creighton, who will teach two classes of Advanced Placement U.S. History.

The Language Arts job posting does not close until September 9, but the popular Laura Strentz, who was pushed out of GHS last year due to budget cuts, is among the applicants. (Strentz is currently on staff as the Minority Outreach Coordinator, but would have to surrender that position if hired in the L.A. department.)

As of Tuesday, five other positions remain open. A teacher is needed for Special Education, History, and Math. The Spanish department needs one full time AP teacher and one half-time Spanish I teacher.

Garfield has hired former fiscal clerk DeeDee Fonder to return to the post she held during the ʼ01-ʼ02 school year. She has the difficult job of making sense of the fiasco that is Garfieldʼs financial records.

The administration wants to hire a youth advocate person who would be in charge of looking after students when they arenʼt at school.

On October 1, Garfield High School will submit the number of students it has in every class and the total population of the school to the district. The school district and the teacherʼs union will then decide if Garfield is below or at the legal limit for number of students per teacher. If the school is not in compliance then the teacherʼs union can file formal complaints or strike, if it deems necessary. This means that the school district will try to fill all remaining positions by the end of September, which will result in students being shifted around in during the first month of school.

Assistant principal Lenora Lee explained that the new teachers would be hired and used to create more classes. When the new classes are created, students will be moved from overfilled classes in random order to the new classes to relieve class size. “They will be moved vertically, same class, same period if possible,” said Ms. Lee. “There will be one day where all the changes would occur.”

The counseling office at Garfield had to work hard on manufacturing student schedules this summer. “Everything has to do with the hiring,” said counselor Leanne Hust. “We used to start looking [for teachers] in April or May, but now with this budget crisis we are hiring the day before school starts, itʼs like weʼre back to square one.” Ms. Hust was less optimistic about having enough qualified teachers to make what Ms. Lee called a “vertical schedule change” – when the teacher is changed but the class and period stay the same. Ms. Hust said that if Garfield canʼt hire enough AP teachers, “People will have to take regular or honors classes because Advanced Placement is not required to graduate from high school.”

Principal Susan Dersé was hopeful that she could finish hiring faculty and staff quickly. Until then, she said, “Weʼll just keep working the best we can.”