Crofton High School Approaches Capacity Enrollment with 3 out of 4 grade levels

At the end of the March 1, 2022 Anne Arundel County Board of Education meeting, the possibility of an additional design development of Crofton Middle School was brought up. There are currently 1313 students at CMS, 38 students over the maximum capacity of 1275. While no one has followed-up on this proposal, it has addressed the increasing student population.

According to the Maryland School Report Card, Crofton High School had 783 students enrolled in the 2020-2021 school year, when the school had only ninth and tenth grade students. At this time, Crofton High School has 1309 students, including freshmen, sophomores, and juniors, with a maximum capacity of 1696, according to the Crofton Area High School Design Development Report. Next year, when the school has all four grades, there will be an estimated 1700-1800 students. This will change the student-teacher ratio from around 17:1 to approximately 23:1. While most classes exceed this ratio, there will be larger classes due to more students.

However, there is a bright side to an increasing number of students. CrHS currently plays Division 3 sports. According to the Maryland Public Secondary Schools Athletic Organization (MPSSAA), “The classification committee shall use a summary of sport offerings for each member school as well as enrollment figures as of September 30th for grades 9, 10, and 11 submitted by the local school systems to conduct an individual analysis of each MPSSAA-administered sport. The classification committee shall then assign classifications and region/section alignments for each sport.” Simply put, schools will play championship games against schools with similar populations.  An increase in students means that Crofton has a higher chance of becoming a D4 school, and getting more athletes at tryouts. 

Staff and students of Crofton Middle School have varied opinions of the influx of students. Freshman Matthew Nicol believes that while CMS was fairly crowded, it was handled well. “It was pretty crowded,” Nicol said, “but it wasn’t what I paid the most attention to.” When asked about class sizes, Nicol believed that most high school classes are large, but science in particular is very overcrowded.

Crofton Middle School 8th grader Megan Elias said the opposite. “The hallways are very crowded and it takes a while to get through. Sometimes it takes forever!” Elias said. While Elias is one of the few students who won’t be attending Crofton High School, instead going to Spalding, she thought that the increase of students will make Crofton High worse than the middle school. Elias thought that ever since coming back from virtual school to in-person, “it makes the population seem like even more.”

Ms. Lynne Fowlkes taught at Crofton Middle as a Family and Consumer Sciences teacher, eventually moving on to Crofton High School in 2020. Teaching the same subject, Ms. Fowlkes now has a classroom on the first floor, far from the crowds. This is a drastic change from CMS, where her classroom was near the cafeteria. “People couldn’t get through, and a counselor was directing traffic every day,” Ms. Fowlkes said, referring to the hallways outside the middle school cafeteria. Ms. Fowlkes mentioned that COVID changed our perspectives on this topic, saying that some current classes had to meet in the multi-purpose/sewing room “so they could be farther apart in their seating”. Overall, Ms. Fowlkes believes it is harder to give students individual attention, but “being in this school and this community is a luxury!”