The Golden Trident

By Morgan Cranford and Lila Qualteri

You have most likely noticed that Golden High School has been taking on more and more students and teachers each year. We are the most crowded we have been in a long time, and there have been some noticeable changes. 

For one, not all teachers have permanent classrooms and many of them move around a lot. At the First Day Assembly, we saw more students sitting on the ground and having to squish uncomfortably into the bleachers than ever. There have even been rumors of rat traps and ant prevalence increasing due to the amount of students entering Golden’s doors. However, not all of these instances are as they seem, and after speaking with Principal John Graham, he has cleared up some of the prevailing rumors.

        One of the most common things you will hear among the Golden student population is that the school is simply not allowed to stop accepting students, by district order. In his response to this rumor, Graham says that generally speaking, principals have the power to decline applications from students who do not live within the designated area for Golden High School. However, they must accept everyone who lives within the Golden area.  As of right now, Golden has 1480 students. 311 of those students are transfers (students who don’t live in the Golden area), making up 21% of our student population. 

Graham stated, “the last time I looked, we had almost as many [students] transferring in, as we did transferring out.” Graham also talked about how students are accepted into Golden saying, “It’s hard for me to say no to a student that maybe their sibling already goes here and other reasons like that. And so there were some transfer students let in this year, but very few.” For the most part, in response to the rapidly growing Golden student population.

Graham has cut off the number of students he is allowed to enroll at the school who do not have Golden as their home school. As for the rest of the student population, contrary to popular belief, this year’s freshman class is not the largest class at Golden. The school’s freshman class has 377 students, the junior class has 355 students, the senior class has 353, and coming in at number one with the largest class at Golden is the sophomore class of 2027 with 395 students. It seems that our population grows dramatically every year which is true to an extent, but it isn’t as substantial as it has been made out to be. As of 2024, there are six high schools in Jefferson County with populations greater than Golden’s, making GHS the seventh largest high school (population-wise) out of thirty-six Jefferson County high schools. 

These pieces of data make it seem as though Golden is growing out of control in a way we cannot compensate for. However, when Graham was asked if he was concerned about this, he said that he feels completely comfortable and safe with where the population is. Many people have expressed concern about the school being too physically small. Graham addresses this by saying we are nowhere close to having to build an addition to our school. Adding to the physical space of the building is a huge project and would take several years along with being incredibly disruptive to the learning environment we have established here at Golden. 

While it would be nice to have a little bit more space, the school is not over max capacity and according to Graham, as long as we don’t grow much more, Golden is doing just fine. Class sizes are large and teachers have to rotate classrooms, but this was accounted for in the original design of the building which is why each department has its own office for its staff.  

The other perspective that must be taken into account is that of teachers. Teachers’ classes are fuller than ever. This leads to things like grading and even learning names much more difficult. Teachers like Lisa Hasse have completely full classes. Hasse stated, “I don’t think I have less than thirty kids in one of my classes.” Hasse teaches the Concurrent Enrollment U.S. History class here at Golden and this year she is teaching nearly half of the sophomore class. Because of this she has had to utilize her TA’s more, and take new and different measures to keep her organization. This of course also affects the schools budget. With Hasse having to teach more, she is getting paid more therefore impacting the school. And it is also likely that these students will go on to Concurrent Enrollment World History with Rebecca Page next year, thus furthering the problem. Though it has presented its challenges, Hasse maintains she loves everyone of her students and loves teaching them. 

Golden’s population has certainly grown but we are at about the most we’ll ever be with the current circumstances. Graham is working hard to keep the population under control by managing the amount of transfer students, hiring new staff members to accommodate the numbers, and also keeping the Golden environment true to what it has always been. So, while our student population is bigger than it’s ever been, we don’t need to worry about the future of our school. The problem isn’t really a problem at all and everything is being dealt with through the proper channels.