With graduation upon us, I am reminded of the miserable 95-degree weather during my Clarkston High School graduation in 2006.
In 2006, the graduating class was around 580 students, which was the largest class to graduate from Clarkston at the time.
The crowd didn’t add any comfort to the extreme heat during the ceremony.
This year, the graduating class of 2008 has more than 600 students. I can’t imagine how they felt sitting through this year’s horrible humidity.
Due to the huge population growth of students, our district has had some trouble finding room for all of them.
In 1999, a new high school was built to accommodate students, the fifth high school Clarkston has had. By the next year, the new school had already reached capacity.
In 2005, freshman and eighth graders moved to a junior high building. This separation was supposed to make the high school less crowded.
But the only difference I noticed was the traditional chant of ‘go home freshman? was changed to ‘go home sophomores.?
It seems Clarkston schools isn’t the only thing changing, though. Our city itself has also expanded. Every time I return home from college, there is a new business opening or new roadwork being done.
The amount of banks and drugstores being added in Clarkston is incredible.
It seems as if every corner has a drugstore or gas station on it and new homes and apartments are rising as well.
A few years ago, Sashabaw Road was expanded to four lanes to control increased traffic flow. This year, the removal of the hill on Sashabaw is hoping to decrease accidents.
Our city is surely growing quickly but will we have the space to accommodate these changes?
Summer intern Ingrid Sjostrand is a junior studying journalism at Grand Valley State Univeristy.She is a Clarkston High School graduate.