PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) \u2014 Enrollment is up at Philadelphia High School for Girls this year, but students say classes are overcrowded because the district hasn\u2019t provided enough teachers to match the increase.<\/p>\n
Chanting \u201cstaff our school,\u201d more than 100 students from Girls\u2019 High took their complaints to the Philadelphia School Board Thursday night. <\/p>\n
Last year\u2019s ninth-grade class was about 200 students. This year, thanks to the recruiting of principal KaTiedra Argro, it\u2019s closer to 300. Students told the school board that the district hasn\u2019t hired enough teachers to meet the extra enrollment, so some classes have more than 50 students. <\/p>\n
The teachers contract limits class sizes to 33. <\/p>\n
Sophomore Olivia Fowler said her African American history class is way over capacity.<\/p>\n
\u201cEleven kids do not have seats. They\u2019re sitting on the couch. They\u2019re sitting on chairs in the back. They\u2019re sitting on the floor,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery day I want to leave that classroom because it\u2019s too hot, it\u2019s too crowded, and I get easily overstimulated,\u201d added ninth-grader Zahara Pitts.<\/p>\n
Deputy Superintendent Brenda Elliott said the district didn\u2019t expect this year\u2019s enrollment surge at Girls\u2019 High.<\/p>\n
Students argued the district had early enrollment numbers in April and should have seen this coming.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe challenge is, when we don\u2019t anticipate that number, we have to then add staff after the school year and re-roster students,\u201d Elliott said.<\/p>\n
The district is adding one, perhaps two, teachers, she said, and rearranging student rosters in the coming days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) \u2014 Enrollment is up at Philadelphia High School for Girls this year, but students say…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":294827,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[122003,69,71,70,122004,521,1998],"class_list":["post-294826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-girls-high","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news","tag-philadelphia-high-school-for-girls","tag-school","tag-school-district-of-philadelphia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294826","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=294826"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294826\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/294827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=294826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=294826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=294826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}