Study hall is held in room O-8, which is as basic as can be. There’s no decorations, only desks.

On one day in early September, most students in O-8 were working on something, on their phone or looking blankly into the distance.  

“Basically you just hang out. If you need to do homework you can do homework, you can take a nap if you want to,” said sophomore Lucas Gifford, who had been on his phone.

Some who take the class are using it as an opportunity to work.

“I put it on my schedule because I felt like it would benefit me and it would help me catch up,” freshman Alex Densongkham said.

However, that is not the reason that the class was created.

“If we hire more teachers to teach more electives, we’d have classes for the kids that are in study hall,” school counselor Joaquin Zapata said. “This year, (creating study halls) was just not to fix the problem, but to fix the problem we had a month or so ago.”

One of the problems is not enough teachers. 

Teacher shortages are a national issue, with as many as 36,000 teacher positions unfilled. These shortages affected DHS, too.

“I had to start this school year with two long-term substitutes,” principal Tim Hamblin said. “Meaning I could not find a certified, licensed teacher for those classes. Particularly in specific subject areas like math or science. Extend that out and start talking about substitutes – nightmare situation trying to get people to come in.”

With not enough teachers, classes filled up, and kids had nowhere to go.

“It’s a lack of teachers, that’s the No. 1 reason,” Zapata said. “We need more teachers, and that’s about it. Well, we also have about 150 more kids that we didn’t expect to show up.” 

Schedule reductions also were offered to seniors earlier in the year. In the past, seniors had a full schedule through the first semester, then in the second semester, they could drop homeroom and only have necessary classes. 

“We lost some electives last year because of a new program to help increase enrollment. They eliminated some single electives. Before we had maybe 15 other classes,” Zapata said.

But no more reduced schedules are allowed the rest of the semester. 

“We are going to stop offering that for the first semester, because if we don’t put a cut-off date it will happen every day. Then part of (assistant principal Corey Gabbert’s) day will be filled with that, part of my day will be filled with that and if you really wanted to change your schedule you would have already spoken up,” Zapata said.