Surprised to find themselves in multiple classes upwards of 30 students, many students are being affected by the ongoing budget crisis.

“There’s a couple ways that we can save money for the district and one of the easiest ones is to put classes up a little bit,” Principal Liz Seabury said.

Of the many larger classes this year, the most notable is Drake’s only Advanced Placement (AP) Economics class which currently has 38 students. This violates a new rule in teacher contracts negotiated between the District and the Teachers’ Union that requires no class to have more than 34 students. This is the first year there has been a cap on the number of students in a single class, and it creates another new scheduling issue at Drake.

“It all stems from scarcity, like we’re learning in Economics. It all stems from an effort to save money,” said AP Economics teacher Mike Kelemen. “The district was trying to be more efficient with its scarce resources, and the implementation of that has not been perfect.” The budget crisis creates a tricky obstacle for the district.

“We’re doing stuff, we’re trying, but it’s gonna be a rough couple years,” said Seabury.