Throughout the past couple years, students have been complaining: Noblesville High School is overcrowded.

Almost 3,000 students walk the halls of NHS everyday, leading to cramped halls, classrooms, and even buses. Many students are angry and annoyed about overcrowding. Sophomore Anthony Macro thinks that buses are getting way too congested.

“There’s three kids in a seat to two kids in a seat,” Macro said.

Having this many students packed onto a bus causes more than just discomfort. The safety of students on a bus is severely endangered. If a bus gets into an accident, and students need to quickly leave the bus, students will run into and knock down eachother.  Furthermore, a packed bus can lead to illnesses passing around quicker.  When you’re packed into a seat with two other people crammed in, all it takes is one cough and you might as well just go straight to the doctors’ office. In addition to safety risks, overcrowding can also be distracting.

“Overcrowding is a really big distraction when i’m trying to get into my locker or finish something before the bell rings,” Macro said.

If someones’ class is across the school and they need to get into their locker quickly, people crowding around them and bumping into them can be sidetracking . When someone’s trying to finish something before the bell rings, it can be especially aggravating when tons of people are swarming around eachother trying to talk over one another. This same noise level can also affect teachers.

“When the room is overcrowded, then in general [students will] be louder, and talking, so it’s harder to help as a group and have everyone involved in the discussion.” Geometry teacher Melissa Shotwell said

Most teachers say that keeping control of students in a classroom is a demanding. When classes are loaded it is 10 times harder for a teacher to keep control. Crowded classrooms also lead to other problems.

“I think just making the student to teacher ratio higher makes it harder to help the individual students that need practice [with schoolwork],” Said Shotwell

If a teacher is helping an individual student who has a question, it can be difficult to give the student all the necessary help when there’s five other hands sticking up in the air.   The largest cause of packed classes is the student to teacher ratio. However, there’s another problem: the student to guidance counselor ratio.

“[Each counselor] has around 400 students each,” Guidance counselor Kristen Frank said.

Having so many students assigned to each counselor can create an overflow of student meetings that counselors have to make. Ask any student about overcrowding and it may seem like Noblesville High School is forever doomed with bursting-at-the-seams classes, hallways and buses.  Contrarily, there is plenty of hope for NHS

“I think NHS has put a lot of excellent resources and tools in place to help with the numbers.” guidance counselor Amanda Fitting said.

Over this summer, NHS has hired one new guidance counselor and 10 new teachers. one of the new guidance counselors Amanda Fitting has helped relieve the workload bestowed upon guidance counselors. The addition of 10 new teachers has lowered the student to teacher ratio, helped make the classroom a focused environment for students, and, according to teachers, has made it easier for teachers to teach.

“Our administration works really hard so whenever we add students they recognize that so then they add teachers, but I know that we’re getting to a place where it sometimes feels tight.” Frank said.