As the 2018-2019 school year comes to a halt, the administration is readying Palo Alto High School for its largest freshman class on record, which is comprised of 589 students, according to Karla Larson from the Guidance office.

Although the number of students is a striking increase from previous years, Principal Adam Paulson says that no major changes are predicted to occur as a result.

The most notable effect is that Paly will be unable to accept as many transfer students, Paulson explained.

“Right now we’re running really high [in numbers of students] and we take them [transfer students] in a case-by-case basis,” Paulson said. “We will have to be a little more stringent this next year because we just can’t accommodate everybody.”

Aside from having a stricter transfer student policy, Paulson says, another predicted challenge with the larger class size is gathering all 589 students for grade-level seminars since buildings like the Performing Arts Center has a capacity of 584 people.

However, class size and courses offered are expected to stay consistent, according to Paulson.

“We [administrators] always allocate the right amount of sections for students so, for instance, with more coming in we’ll have more sections of various classes,” Paulson said. “Class size shouldn’t change or anything, just sections for subjects will increase.”

No future classes are expected to be as big as the one matriculating to Paly in the 2019-2020 school year.