With every new school year comes new students and faculty. This year alone, Ascension had 75 new faces at the Sugar Mill Pond campus. At this campus currently, there are around 350 students. This many students contained in one main building for classes and breaks creates heavy traffic in the hallways. In the last two years, the number of students have outgrown the building. Class sizes are bigger now than they have ever been, some classes with around 75 students. Junior Jacqueline Cloutier says that “in some of [her] classes, [she] can’t even tell who all is in it because of the size.” Administration, prefects, and class leaders have been pitching strategies and idea on how to make things more efficient.

On Friday, August 18, all student leaders were called away to a meeting to discuss the master plan of Ascension. In this meeting, they did various activities in which they pitched their own ideas about what the future of Ascension should look like. The people running the meeting took their ideas and discussed them with the School Board in another meeting the next day. By doing this, Ascension is ensuring that no matter how big the school gets, the students will have a voice in what comes next. Head Prefect Abigail Boland believes that the most important part of this entire situation is that administration take into account their ideas and concerns: “Not only did they ask us for our opinions about the school’s future, they asked us what we want Ascension to always have.”

By asking them what they want Ascension to always, the school is ensuring that no matter how many students are present at this campus, each one of them will have the opportunity to get the “Ascension Experience”. However, it takes time to build a new building. As a temporary fix, the Sugar Mill Pond campus are getting portable buildings similar to the ones that used to be at the Downtown campus. This will help spread out the students so that it does not seem so crowded in the hallways.