AHS enrollment and concerns

Julian Wan Online Editor

Freshmen are always at it with their shenanigans but this year there’s a lot of them, and I mean a lot.

Over the last few years, Arcata High School had a dramatic increase in student enrollment.

According to data provided from Arcata High Administration, student enrollment at Arcata High during the academic year of 20202021 was 937 students.

This data is significantly lower than the average enrollment rates due to the COVID-19 pandemic and distance learning.

AHS opened back to in-person face-to-face learning for 20212022, which brought the number of students up to 1021. Arcata High currently has a total of 1073 students.

Breaking it down, the freshman class this year has 281 students. The sophomores have the largest class, totaling 290 students.

The freshman and sophomore classes combined total up to 53% of the student population, a drastic jump from the Junior and Senior classes who have 252 and 250 students respectively.

Furthermore, 403 students enrolled at AHS are inter-district and intra-district students.

That’s about 37% of the AHS students who do not live in Arcata. 1 in 6 students at Arcata High live in Eureka, and 1 in 5 students at Arcata High live in McKinleyville.

Two questions arise: What makes Arcata High more favorable than other schools?

What are the concerns of teachers and students in adapting to this influx of students?

Freshman, Aiden Matlock, is an intra-district student and said that his favorite part about Arcata High is open campus lunch and how close the campus is to lunch spots in Arcata.

“Out of all the schools, I would choose Arcata,” Matlock said.

Sophomore Cassidy Kinnicutt, is enjoying her first year at Arcata and mentioned that the students here are really friendly.

She recently moved from the Bay Area and explained that Arcata’s music program was what brought her to Arcata High.

“Orchestra was one of the main reasons. I wanted to be in a more established orchestra or a full one…I heard the music department was better here,” Kinnicutt said.

Dominic Previde is a Junior at Arcata High who formerly attended MHS. He said his reason for transferring schools was because he had more friends attending AHS.

“I transferred mostly because I have more friends here, that’s the biggest reason…And it’s more convenient because I work in Arcata,” Previde said.

Leitala Vainuku is another transfer student at Arcata High who attended Eureka High last year. She commented that she wanted to be on a better volleyball team.

“I heard that this school was more about academics. Sports here is better than Eureka,” Vainuku said.

Although Arcata High offers excellent programs, the overflow of students poses challenges for teachers and staff.

Therese FitzMaurice, a new English teacher at Arcata High, discussed how the large number of freshmen impacted her teaching and classroom environment.

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