GTJHS has been steadily rising over the past few years allegedly because the enrollment rate has been exceeding capacity. Many students have come to the agreement that the amount of students being enrolled at the high school is absurd. 

According to Wikiwand, the population at the high school started to make a dramatic increase in 1997 with a population of 1,457 students. In 2008, it was reported that over 2,000 students were attending the school that year. For 4 years, the population has been decreasing due to students being redistricted to Oakdale High School. 

After about a year of virtual learning, many students have been enrolled into TJHS. The high school welcomed almost 2,000 students this year. After talking with several students, most students have noticed the overcrowding getting worse, but this year was very abnormal.

With the overcrowding at GTJHS, students have claimed that they have been facing many problems when going. Destiny Russell, a senior at TJHS, mentioned.¨ We face problems with getting to classes in a timely manner, and long lunch lines.  I’m sure it breaks covid restrictions on distance.”

Russell added, ¨Even though we have lunch shifts, it takes a really long time for kids in the lunch line to revive food then they only have a couple minutes to eat.¨ 

Nathaniel Diaz, a junior, agreed with Destiny, explaining “Most of the time it’s trying to get to class on time because everyone is stuck going through these small hallways at the same time.” 

Not many people talk about the real problem students have to encounter, why is it such a big problem? How does it affect the students personally? Russell believes, ¨It prohibits kids from getting the best education they can as well as making them unsafe; .teachers have less time to help everybody because the class sizes are so huge.¨ 

Since August 18th this year, many students have enrolled into the high school. Hopefully the problem will be resolved as soon as possible but for the time being, the overcrowding will only get better if students get transferred to a less crowded school.