Kaci Pak, a junior, was disappointed when she received an email from her counselor last year about her course selection.

“Due to low enrollment, we will not be offering Women’s Studies next year,” it read.

In accordance with budget limitations set by Loudoun County Public Schools, a class period should have no less than fifteen students per class.

Per the LCPS Program of Studies, if enrollment in a class is low, under fifteen students, the class may not be available, semester and yearlong classes may be combined, or the class may not be offered at all.

Students begin their course selection process for the following school year in as early as late January. Shortly after, counselors notify students if any changes have to be made, including course selection changes caused by low enrollment.

“I was pretty sad because I felt like I missed out on an opportunity to further my passion for this topic,” said Pak. “Even though I can do my own learning on women’s studies, I won’t be able to learn in a classroom environment with a teacher, which sucks.”

Teachers were disappointed as well.

“We put a lot of effort into our advertising, and I was excited to teach the class,” said Kirsten Cleary, who would’ve been the Women’s Studies teacher.

Other classes with low enrollment were either combined, or offered at a higher level.

Spanish 5, for example, was originally offered as either an honors or Dual Enrollment (DE). However, the Honors class ended up not being offered due to low enrollment. Students were then given two options: registering for the DE course, or enrolling in an entirely different course. This was a new decision made for the 24-25 school year.

“Last year, we just combined the two classes,” said Christi Campbell, Director of Counseling. “This year, we pushed the kids who originally chose Honors to do DE because there really isn’t a difference in curriculum.”

This led to conflicting choices being made. Students who wanted to continue taking Spanish, without the rigor of a DE course, were more pressured to take the higher level. The main difference between DE and Honors courses is the course format, retake policy, and workload.

“At first, I wanted to take Honors because I was already planning on taking many APs and DEs, and didn’t want to add more that I couldn’t handle,” said Mokhsha Arulkumaran, a Junior. “But I really wanted to continue taking Spanish since I’ve been taking it since 7th grade, and a lot of people have told me that continuing to take it throughout high school would appeal to colleges more. So I ended up taking DE.”

Many students, including Arulkumaran, believed that taking the Honors course would’ve been more ideal, even if it meant the class would be combined with the DE class.

Despite not wanting to take the DE class, Arulkumaran didn’t want to replace it with an Academic elective.

“I think the DE class will look better on my transcript,” she said.

This is the thought process that many Lightridge students have when it comes to making course selections. Instead of choosing to take classes that are interesting to them, students often opt for classes that are weighted more, for the benefit of a GPA boost and showing colleges that they can handle harder classes.

According to members of the counselling department, this becomes a problem when students choose to overload themselves by taking all AP/DE courses.

“Students at Lightridge tend to overcommit and take on too much, even though we try very hard to encourage them not to,” Campbell said.

Ultimately, this is the reason so many classes are no longer offered. 13 out of the 14 classes affected by low enrollment were academic level, the only other class being honors, and none AP or DE.

“At Lightridge, our students are so academically competitive that it makes it really hard for academically driven students to want to take these electives, when they can take an Honors, AP, or DE elective to get that GPA boost for their applications,” Cleary said.

When 124 Lightridge students were asked about choosing between taking an Academic elective of their interest, or an AP/DE class, 88.7% said they would rather pick the AP/DE class. 87.9% said they would take an AP/DE class over an Honors class.

“I joke all the time that if we had AP PE, everyone of our students would take it.” said Campbell.

Additionally, 50.9% of students say they would choose AP/DE class over an academic class for elevating their college applications, and 34.5% said they would for college applications as well as peer pressure.

As the new year is approaching, students will be making course selections for the 2025-2026 year. The problem will still persist, and more classes will be dropped.

“Nowadays, students are in this system that makes them fight to get into colleges because everybody’s so competitive with each other. It’s hard to see kids that are passionate about something not take classes to learn more about those passions, but instead take certain classes to boost a resume and get into college,” Cleary said. “It’s sad to see, but I get it. It’s just a horrible system we’re all in.”