The crowded classroom situation at New Ulm Junior High School is expected to reach its peak next fall.

Enrollment projections indicate 887 students will be housed in a school building that is adequate for 770 students, principal Dean Risius told school board members Thursday.

“WE’RE CROWDED,” he said. “We’re overcrowding that building.”

The school board, faced in the elementary grades with declining enrollments that are to begin being felt at the junior high school in the 1977-78 school year, authorized Supt. T.R. Olson to contact an architectural firm to lend a hand determining the least costly way to alleviate the crowded conditions.

Such action could include shuttling science rooms to an area of the building where gas and running water could be connected most economically, shifting other classrooms to the present locations of those science classrooms and constructing or renting some type of facility — possibly temporary classrooms — to allow the building more space.

“I think we’ve reached a point where we have no choice but to do something about it,” Board member Ronald Albright said.

THERE ARE three basic areas where help is needed, according to Risius: an additional art room,outdated science facilities and lack of storage space for industrial arts.”That art situation is a very, very extreme emergency, I would say,” he told the board.

There is one art room in the building currently, with an average of 24 students in 11 sections of art classes. With seven hours in a day, Risius explained, four classes must be taught in a science room.

The room isn’t particularly conducive to art instruction, he said, and because art is taught in the room, he added that it is “tough” ‘to teach science in the classroom since equipment and material have to be shuttled.

IN ADDITION, science rooms,he said, have poor facilities, with ventilation that is bad. Lab work cannot be done in some of the classrooms because there is no running water.

“It’s just not conducive to modern teaching,” Risius said.

In the industrial arts classes, he told the board, increase in enrollments and participation by female students is crowding the situation to the extent that there is no adequate storage room.

In one industrial arts room, he said as an example, newly installed windows were boarded up so that shelving to store supplies could be built.

“We’re using every nook and crannie you can imagine,” Risius said,”but we still don’t have enough room.”

OTHER AREAS where space is needed, according to Risius, are agriculture, home economics (particularly in sewing), physical education and additional classrooms and conference areas.

Olson indicated that if the three top priority problems can be eliminated, that could help clear space to improve the situation for agriculture and home economics. The answer, Risius said, is not in increased class sizes.

“I don’t know how we can go up any higher in class size than we are now with the building we have now,” he said.

THE PROJECTIONS, which he labeled to a large extent “guesses” and which Olson labeled as conservative, indicate there are currently 861 students at the school, with 281 in ninth grade, 296 in eighth, grade and 284 in seventh grade.

Next year, the projections indicate the school will have its largest ninth grade class ever, with 336 students. An additional 289 in eighth grade and 262 in seventh grade make up the remainder.

Then, in 1977-78, the school is expected to see its first decline in a number of years to a total of 846, with 329 in ninth grade, 267 in eighth and 250 in seventh.

According to the projections, size is expected to continue to drop to a total of 738 in 1981-82, although Risius emphasized that projections that far in advance are difficult to make accurately. The optimum enrollment for that school, he said, is 650 to 670.

New Ulm Daily Journal

Feb. 6, 1976