With the opening of Lebanon Trail High School in August, newly redrawn attendance zones will take away approximately 200 students from next year’s freshmen class. This year’s enrollment is above 2,000 students leading some teachers to believe class sizes could be smaller and that this change will benefit the school.

“I feel like Liberty is already pretty overcrowded,” math teacher Wes Richter said. “It’s gonna be good especially since I teach Algebra 1 so that’s a big freshman class, the sizes need to go down, that being the foundation of mathematics.”

But although there will be fewer freshmen on campus, other grade levels will have as many students as they currently have.

“Mr. Warstler told us there’s probably gonna be 200 less,” biology teacher Meredith McConnell said. “And that we’d have more seniors though, so there probably is only going to be a difference between the numbers by 30.”

Fewer freshmen on campus in 2016-17 means that some teachers will have smaller classes, but it could also mean teaching different grade levels.

“They’re gonna try to rearrange it so a lot of teachers who taught freshman courses will have to try to teach high level courses,” McConnell said. “Like, this year I teach environmental science as well, which sophomores through senior can take that. So they’re gonna be able to rearrange us so we’re able to teach more than just freshman.”

A lower number of freshman on campus will allow teachers to focus more on the importance that the first year of high school holds.

“I think it will probably benefit us to some extent,” freshman English teacher Jennifer Whiffin said. “Ninth grade is such an important year to establish the way our culture of our school works and so when teachers can have fewer kids and smaller class sizes, they can focus more on them and I think that will help them grow in their upperclassmen years.”