Principal Tom Harmas sits at his desk, wearing a mask to comply with COVID-19 guidelines. He said administration is currently planning for next year by analyzing staffing needs and determining which changes from the current school year, such as staggered bells and mandated lanyards, will remain in future years.

Principal Tom Harmas said one of his current priorities is looking at the new class enrollments to determine if the school needs a different staffing plan for next year.

He said, “We’re working on staffing, and we’re looking at how many staff we need in each one of the departments to take care of all the classes. That’s been taking a lot of time because we only have so many staff members and you can only offer so many courses. And we have to figure out what that looks like.”

According to Harmas, he first looks at the enrollment numbers, from the past 2 years as well as the prospective numbers based on scheduling for next year, for every single class offered at the high school. He said he then determines how many sections each class will have and if any additional teachers will be needed to fulfill those requirements.

He said, “This analysis tells us who we’re going to hire. This tells us who might have to leave the high school and go to the middle school. It might be the other way too. If the middle school is losing population, they might send a teacher to us.”

Harmas said that he then talks to the other CCS district principals as well as the financial department to determine the distribution of the staffing budget before starting to make hiring decisions in late spring. He said that simultaneously, the administration works to finalize the master class schedule for next year, which he said was actually completely redone this year due to COVID-19.

Senior Briana Chen said that this new version of the master schedule created a lot of confusion at the beginning of the school year for her. She said with the new schedule, she had a conflict between her math class and her choir, forcing her to switch choir groups from Blue and Gold Choir to Rhapsody.

She said she hopes that the administrators take student class conflicts into account as they make staffing and scheduling decisions for next year.