Lucy Loes

Because of a drop in birth rates, next year’s freshman class will be around 20 kids smaller than average.

Although enrollment trends have remained stable at BSM in recent years, there is a slight dip in class size for the incoming freshmen. It’s anticipated that there will be about 20 fewer students in the class of 2028, which means that teachers may have to make slight adjustments.

The drop in students is actually a result of a lower number of children in that age group, not a declining enrollment trend. It parallels the lowered birth rates that resulted from the recession from 2007 to 2009. “A couple years ago, when we saw a little bit of a dip with our seventh-grade class, that’s because there weren’t as many [kids] there … We’re seeing that trickle up this year, a little bit to that ninth-grade class,” Director of Senior High Admissions Betsy Van Cleve said.

Despite the smaller freshman class, all of the teachers have been given their full contracts. “Even though the freshman class is a little bit smaller for next year, we want to keep the teachers [because] we feel like we have good teachers,” Senior High Principal Stephanie Nitchals said.

BSM is making a few minor adjustments to ensure teachers can maintain their contracts. “For teachers who teach core classes, they will just have smaller classes. But in the electives, where maybe not enough students took [the class] for it to run, they may be asked to do maybe extra supervision or something like that to fill out their contract … it shouldn’t affect their day-to-day very much,” Nitchals said.

In essence, a smaller freshman class won’t have many drastic effects, especially as BSM predicted and prepared for the drop. “We continue to be able to offer the amazing academic choices, the co-curriculars and just a wealth of opportunity for students … we’ve been able to anticipate these kinds of trends, so we’ve planned ahead, really from even a budgetary perspective,” Van Cleve said.