Grand Junction High School may not be as prepared as once thought while entering the new building in the 2024-2025 school year.
GJHS has an extra 68,000 square feet in the $144.5 newly opened building and about 600 freshmen, however many things are running low in numbers, such as Chromebooks and Chromebook chargers. GJHS also faces the possibility that if next year’s freshman class is as big as it was this year, the school may go over its listed capacity limit of 1,850 students.
While Chromebooks were not an expected problem, it has been resolved with multiple orders of new chargers. Students without chargers will not have to pay money in order to gain a charger.
“When I got mine, they told me that people with no chargers are not going to get charged for it and that once they get chargers we’ll be able to have one. They said it should be soon, I’m not sure when they’ll actually do that,” said GJHS junior Amirra Dolobacs.
“Warm body” counts have been conducted multiple times throughout several school days in order to give a close estimate of how many students are actually showing up to school every day. The enrolled total as the school year began was listed at more than 1,850.
“I would say that in the high 1,700 is where we are on those counts, so like 1,780 students is how many that we would count in a particular day but that’s not every student that we have necessarily because we have absent students,” said GJHS principal Jory Sorensen.
Compared with other School District 51 high schools, there are reportedly 1,460 students at Fruita Monument, 1,400 at Central, and about 1,000 at Palisade.
While GJHS may be a bit under the maximum capacity of students in the building, it seems as if some classrooms weren’t as well prepared for large numbers of students in classes. There have been multiple occasions where one or more students don’t have a seat in a class.
“During classes there’s kids without seats in their classes because they’re, it’s like literally a part of their seating chart because there’s not enough furniture,” GJHS senior Sophia Mueller said.
GJHS may need to take a couple weeks in order to get organized and get systems in place to adjust to the large population. Over the school year administrators expect to adapt to the increased enrollment.
“We have more students than we thought we were getting, but the building can handle it, we just need to adjust,” said Sorensen.
