Students in two Social Services Academy career paths are experiencing problems with their schedules after a teacher suddenly quit, leaving students without an instructor.

“It moved around a lot of my classes that I got comfortable with and made friends in so I had to find new people and I’m still uncomfortable with the new classes,” sophomore Karina Escobar said.

Counselors and teachers have worked to adjust the schedules of all students taking Principles of Health Science and Health Science as a result of the loss of the career and technology teacher, whose position is difficult to replace. Administrators hope to fill the po- sition as soon as possible, but it could take months before a suitable replacement is found.

“The administration and I were discussing and we’re still going to look for a health science teacher for next year,” said Health Science teacher Rebecca Jenschke. “This year we are pretty set on trying to make it work just because of all the change and it would affect [the students] more. But definitely next year we’re looking at hiring another health science teacher.”

In the meantime, some students were moved into other elective classes and teachers have taken on ex- tra periods to accommodate some of the affected stu- dents. Now some classes are up to three times larger than they were before.

“We were willing to do it because we don’t want the health science kids to suffer at all,” Jenschke said. “We want to make sure that (the students) still have the opportunity as juniors and seniors to be on the in- ternship program and are going to be ready for that. And we felt that if they had a substitute they might not get what they needed to pursue what comes next year.”

Although the larger class sizes have made teaching a challenge, the teachers are doing everything they can to make the best of a difficult situation, Jenschke said.

“Going from a class of 12 to 35 is a big change so it’s kind of hard for me too,” Jenschke said. “I’m used to teaching 12 kids because I can really build a rela- tionship with them. I know their learning styles.”