The snaps and swishes of flags slice the silence of Central High School's main floor hallway as flag team members practice their routine, the red nylon material flapping around their bodies like giant butterflies.

Freshmen Megan Voss and Emily Diaz are using their free period to squeeze in an extra practice, and this hall is one of the few open spaces in the building.

The Central High School hallways have become an overflow valve for the school, and when the classrooms can't hold any more, the students, programs and supplies spill out, which happened with Voss and Diaz, carts of microscopes in the science department and students sitting through in-school suspension.

"It's not where you want it, for obvious reasons," said Principal Mike Talley of the in-school suspension classroom set up at the far end of the second-floor hallway. "But there's absolutely no place for it to be."

Central High's overcrowding, and the fact that it is already at 110 percent capacity and growing, is an issue largely shouldered by the school board. The board has adopted a 10-year facilities plan crafted by MGT of America and says alleviating the issues at Central, which houses 2,400 students, is its priority.

But to the students and staff within the walls of Central High School, overcrowding is more than a conversation: It is what they're living every day.

Buckle up

The best view of Central's tight quarters is from the second floor overlooking the first as the bell rings for a change of classes in the morning. Students pour out of classrooms and converge on a main stairwell, where they back up to a crawl.

Being in the crowd means being smashed into backpacks, elbows and bodies, and there is no turning back if you are in the middle of the flow. It would mean swimming upstream, and if you forget a book or your calculator back at your locker, it would be better to just sit on the sidelines and wait until the crowd has dispersed and you're late.

"Those hallways - you're like sardines in there," said Dale Hartig, a security officer in the school. "We need more space badly."

Education research shows that students do better in smaller schools, said assistant superintendent Katie Bray, and most recent studies suggest that 800 students at a high school should be the limit.

The same research shows that small schools graduate a higher percentage of students, have lower rates of violence and disciplinary problems and send more students on to postsecondary education than larger schools.

Not only would a less-crowded school make for more personal attention for students, it would simply make it easier to get around.

Beth Farrar has taught science at the school for 19 years, and has witnessed the school bear its growing pains. The packed hallways have been the biggest sign of too much growth, and teachers are caught in the flow right along with students.

"Buckle up and get ready," Farrar said.

They push carts piled high with computers, books and notes, and compete in the same dash as students to get to the next class. Because of space issues, many of the teachers don't have their own classrooms.

The nomadic system stymies creativity for teachers, said Mary Mahoney, an English teacher.

"It's hard for teachers to set anything up," she said. "That's what's hard - the creative things they can't do."

It also makes it difficult for students to find teachers outside of class, she said.

Carol Hubbeling taught language arts at Central for 30 years before retiring in 2007. She was a roaming teacher for the first part of her career and was in her own classroom for the last nine years.

Having her own classroom made a difference, she said. She had fewer disciplinary problems because she was in the classroom before and after class, and she was around when students had questions.

"I realized I was a much better teacher when I didn't have to go from room to room," she said.

Bob Perceval, English department co-chairman at Central, has been teaching there for 15 years. His office is in one of the classrooms he teaches in, but during his free period, he won't be found there because another teacher is using it.

"Our administration has done a great job of filling every hole we can," he said.

His office area in the back of the classroom also doubles as a storage area, with teachers coming in often to pick up supplies. It means that people are in and out of the room constantly, he said.

"The students don't even blink an eye," he said.

In class

Students in Farrar's science class are getting a lesson in electrons and protons - and also in traffic flow.

Seated in tight quarters in the chemistry laboratory, students are briefed at the beginning of each lab about where they can walk and where they can't so there aren't any collisions. The large class sizes, cramped classrooms and science-lab experiments are a dangerous combination, she said.

"When it's crowded, there's a heightened security factor," Farrar said. "We have to talk about traffic flow. You're going to walk this way and then turn here."

Farrar said she is using Bunsen burners less and hot plates more during labs, "to keep students a little bit safer."

The science labs also double as classrooms, Talley said.

"The intent wasn't to stick 35 kids in each room when the building was originally constructed," he said.

Because Central is on block scheduling, students are in each class for an hour and a half, he said, and it takes "a degree of creativity for teachers to make fun and exciting lesson for the day, and it's easy to become off task when there are overcrowded classrooms."

Core classes are often the classes most crowded, Talley said, and he fears things could get tighter with a new law that begins next year requiring anyone younger than 18 to be in school.

"Core classes are severely, severely full," he said, and the issue is about more than numbers; it's about students being successful in school. "We'll be putting additional kids into already full classrooms, and some of these kids may not want to be here."

Aside from safety issues, classes can grow larger than 30 and are uncomfortable, Farrar said. "Our rooms are so hot when they're crowded," she said.

The ROTC program at Central is the largest program in the state with 150 students but only one classroom to use throughout the week. The nearby supply closet is literally filled to the ceiling with equipment.

"They've turned anything larger than a closet into a classroom," security officer Hartig said.

This is true of the former teachers' lounge on the second floor. Teachers eat lunch at a table in the hallway or in a math classroom during a rare empty period.

The theater, where students go for assemblies and speakers, can seat only a third of the freshman class, which has ballooned to an unexpected 800 students. The gymnasium is used by multiple classes at a time. And now that boys and girls have sports at the same time and have nights when both teams are playing, some students change uniforms in storage areas or the band room before games because there is no room for four teams and cheerleaders in the locker rooms.

But Diaz, a students and flag-team member, said she doesn't mind making adjustments.

"This is what high school is supposed to be," she said.

Farrar said many students don't know any different.

"This is their normal," she said. "We don't know what we're missing or what the alternative would be."

It doesn't stop her from what she is there to do, she added.

"I would hope that I'm teaching kids to the best of my ability, crowded or not."

Come on in

The Rapid City School district's open enrollment options have created part of the overcrowding problem at Central. But not allowing parents a choice could affect students such as sophomore Amanda Heiland, who wasn't getting along with some of the girls in her class at Stevens High School and liked the idea of the block scheduling at Central.

Her open enrollment request was granted by the school board at the end of last year, along with several other requests for Central. Members of the school board historically approve enrollment requests.

Leah Lutheran said it is a matter of supporting the concept of open enrollment. At a recent meeting, board members Bret Swanson and Wes Storm objected to approving a new string of requests for Central.

"We're doing a disservice to the students we're letting in, we're doing a disservice to teachers, we're doing a disservice to the students already there by packing Central," Swanson said. "We're not following the mission we're set to follow."

Heiland knows that she's one of the students at the center of the debate but said she likes it here. She has made friends, and she gets most of her homework done during the day with the new schedule. But there was one aspect of Central that surprised her.

"I didn't think it would be this crowded. It's super, super crowded," she said, but that's not enough to make her want to leave.

Eventually, the requests will not be approved, said Bray, who must also sign off on them.

"We don't want to take away choices from parents," Talley said. "But sometimes you have to be practical and say, 'Maybe before we can say yes, we better find out if we can house that student.'"

One in the crowd

Andy Hubbeling taught math at Central for 36 years and has been retired for 10. The building was already starting to crowd during his tenure, but he remembers small classes and manageable hall crowds in the beginning. By the time he left, it had changed.

"You learn the kids in your class, and then you walk out into the hallway, and you don't know anyone," he said.

His wife, Carol, who taught there for 30 years, agreed.

"Now, if someone is causing trouble, you can't call them by name. They can just disappear in the crowd," Carol Hubbeling said.

The students who suffer academically are the ones who won't speak up for themselves, Mahoney said. "They get lost in the shuffle."

Alyssa Christiansen, a senior, has felt that way. She attends Jefferson Academy for some of her classes.

"I like it a lot better," she said. "There are less people, and the teachers have more time for you."

Contact Kayla Gahagan at 394-8410 or kayla.gahagan@rapidcityjournal.com