As if the first few weeks of school are not chaotic enough, Rocklin High School students were challenged with multiple teacher complications, bringing a frustrating start to the students’ year.

In just the first two weeks of the school year, over 300 students have had schedule and teacher changes inflicted upon them. Specifically the students who chose to take the Sierra College Dual Enrollment US History course.

Last spring administration counted on Mrs. Jullianne Benzel to teach the course. However, after taking a leave of absence due to a disagreement with the administration, Mrs. Benzel has not returned to Rocklin High nor does she plan to.

Dual Enrollment courses are a new addition to Rocklin High’s campus and are offered as an alternative way to earn college credit without having to take an AP test. They require a teacher with a specific degree to instruct them and Mrs. Benzel was the only teacher with the qualifications.

Students were excited about this course addition as it served as middle ground between the regular course, and the high stress AP class.

“When I heard about the Dual Enrollment option I was really excited because I wanted a challenge, but I didn’t want to overload my schedule with AP classes,” junior Raquel Kimm said.

At the start of the new school year, Benzel’s status was still ‘unknown’ to the falculty and students As a result, this years juniors were left with no qualified teacher to teach the Dual enrollment history course, forcing them to choose a new history course: regular or AP, US History.

With the deletion of the Dual Enrollment course, over 150 students were left unplaced in a history class and teachers were needed for the students Benzel was originally planned to have in her classes.

“I loved the class I was in, it had a lot of my friends in it and it fit perfectly within my schedule, when they told me that might all change I was annoyed.” said junior Sophia Campagna.

Not only did this put a major strain on students now with unofficial schedules, but it put a strain on the teachers with new classes to teach, and on the counselors with over a hundred schedules to change and fit to the students needs.

Even students not planning on taking the Dual Enrollment course were affected. Because of the teacher changes other history students lost their original teachers or had classroom changes.

“It made me and my family a little frustrated because we were not getting a lot of information on what was going to happen, instead they stuck us in a small classroom with about forty students and did nothing for two weeks.” said junior Lauren Huston.

Administration also felt added stress, as it became their responsibility to reconfigure classes and correlating teachers, and the moving of teachers created a shift in classes other than just US History.

“Mr. Benzel was able to give up his PE sections to Mr. Harter and come and take two vacated classes. Mr. Spears who was overseeing our intervention period gave that up, and is now teaching World History.” said Principal Davis Stewart.

Mr. Ryan Spears and Ms. April Kenitzer picked up Ms. Monica Harter’s World History classes so she could teach two of the vacated US History classes. The principal also included that the administration is now looking for a solution to the intervention period that was dropped by Mr. Spears.

Despite complications that students thought might take months to properly fix the faculty resolved the problem and students are now in their permanent classes for the year.