Every year, among public schools, Hopwood registers the biggest student to teacher ratio, sometimes reaching 32 to 1.
Last year, the school had 1,168 students but is projecting a slight decrease this year as a result of the off-island relocation of some of its students’ families.
Acting Principal Christine T. Masga said they had 49 teachers last year but will have only 41 this year.
She said they are in the process of hiring four teachers — two for the language arts and two for vocational classes.
The lack of funding prevents the school from hiring new full-time employees.
Masga said last year, six of their teachers went back to the U.S. while another transferred to another school.
“Total count of teachers right now is 41 of whom 65 percent are highly qualified while the rest are waiting for their test results,” she said. “I will need at least 43 teachers before the school opens to accommodate our expected number of students.”
Masga hopes that their student-teacher ratio will be 28 to 1.
Last school year, she said, some classes had to accommodate up to 32 students due to lack of teachers for a specific content area or specialized subjects.
“If I get more students this year, I will push for the hiring of another teacher to prevent the worst situation from happening again,” she added.
According to Masga, if the Public School System wants to meet its mandate and goals, “We need to really bring down the [student-teacher] ratio to make our scores go up.”
She desires to have a maximum of 24 students per class at Hopwood.
The school has enough classrooms, but two of its buildings that have 12 classrooms each — buildings E and V— need major renovations due to their dilapidated and termite-infested conditions, Masga said.
The school’s vocational building, M1 and M2, also need immediate repairs, she added.
“Right now we’re just maintaining them through minor repairs — band-aid solutions,” she said, adding that although federal funding has already allocated they need to wait for the new school year to access the money.
But building A’s electrical problems have been fixed and will no longer pose a danger to the safety of students, Masga said.
Each year, Hopwood gets $60,000 in operational budget half of which paid the salaries of its two security personnel last year.
The rest of the amount was used to buy toilet paper, teacher supplies, fuel for school vehicles, maintenance work and other immediate needs.
Masga said Hopwood is thankful that it received $8,000 through educational tax credit donations.
When classes open on Sept. 8, she is concerned about the effect of power outages to the student learning.
“The power outages will be a big problem this school year because if they’re going to do it every three hours, the schools need to prepare on how we can continue the teaching and learning in the classrooms,” she said. “Getting the kids to focus on learning is our goal.”
Hopwood has one small generator that can only produce power for its main office’s equipment.
Classes have to be suspended after two hours of blackout for safety and sanitary reasons, Masga said.
Despite these challenges, she said Hopwood will start the new school year with enough instructional materials, clean rooms, repainted classrooms, and well-maintained school grounds.
