We get it. School is too crowded, we’re lacking teachers, and the endless list of problems that everyone comes up with goes on.

At this very moment there are finishing touches being made to a new high school opening this upcoming school year just past the Carson-Long Beach border. It is going to house about 1,800 Banning and Carson High students as well as current eighth graders who will be freshmen next year. Soon enough, we will be losing a large amount of non-seniors who live closer to that area. Upcoming seniors will have to stay at Carson, regardless of where they live because the new school is still unaccredited. Less students at school next year would usually be good news, but wait just one second before rejoicing.

Losing students to the new school also means losing even more teachers. As enjoyable as it would be to have more space on campus, one cannot guarantee that their classes will get any smaller. Lunch lines will get shorter and it will be easier to get to class, but that doesn’t mean that we’ll be receiving the personal attention we all need from our teachers.

It’s very much agreed that everyone would like school to get smaller next year, but it’s not really fair to everyone either as some people might be forced to move (or not move) when they don’t (or do) want to. Upcoming freshmen who want to go to Carson or current students that live past the 405 Freeway but wish to graduate here won’t get that chance. We’ll also be losing many good teachers because we’ll be losing lots of students. If they haven’t taught here long enough, chances are we won’t be seeing them on our campus next year.

However, with the loss of so many students, we could also use it to our advantage. Getting rid of the Z building bungalows would mean that students wouldn’t have to walk too far to get to class, and it could be turned into a student parking lot as well. Creating a student parking lot inside of school would take away some of the traffic and troubles of finding a parking around school, and it would also benefit nearby neighbors who don’t like teenagers hanging near their houses. If students could park where the Z building is currently, it could be of great convenience to everyone.

It’s difficult to deal with these kinds of decisions, but we don’t live in a perfect world. We’d be having a smaller campus and keeping all our teachers if that were the case. Unfortunately, we just have to take the changes as they come at us.

Change is always happening with our school, whether big or small. Opening a new high school in our area is going to make a huge change indeed—we’ll see how much it affects us next year.