Aarshia Bhattacharyya

The last names that are in math teacher Sharon Kosteva’s advisory.

Upon arriving for their first day, many Westford Academy students were placed in different advisories with little warning of the change on Aug. 28. This occurred due to the loss of thirteen staff members as a result of budget cuts at the end of the 2023-2024 school year.

The loss of advisory teachers and an influx of new students led to advisories being rearranged to accommodate for the changes. According to Dean Amanda Welch, the number of students enrolled at Westford Academy increased from around 1400 to 1521. On top of the freshman class being unusually large, several students have also transferred to WA from other high schools.

Additionally, in the aftermath of the budget cuts, approximately twelve classrooms were left without teachers. This forced advisories to be reshuffled in a way that kept students in alphabetical order and left remaining staff with a manageable amount of students.

“The decision [to rearrange advisories] was made because we had to,” Welch said. ” It was just unavoidable.”

As the decision was not made until the summer, administration was unable to notify students of the switch. Some found out after noticing a change to their schedules on PowerSchool, but many learned of the rearranging on the first day of school, causing some confusion in the morning as students headed to their advisories.

“I could see the potential positives of emailing [the advisory changes] out […] but I think the student body knew that there were going to be some scheduling challenges, and this was one of them,” Welch said.

Welch hopes that students who are unhappy with the change know that they can still visit their previous advisory teacher and see this as an opportunity to meet new teachers and new people. She also notes that so far, staff and students have been flexible.

“It was kind of hard to get adjusted, especially because no one told us the advisories had changed […] but it didn’t affect me too much since we barely go to advisory,” sophomore Phillis Lu said.

Advisories will most likely remain the same for the next few years, according to Welch. The school is hopeful that there will be new staff in the coming years to be added to the advisory system.

“[New staff] will just continue to foster that relationship that we want students and teachers to have in the classroom, outside the classroom, and really just [help Westford Academy] grow to be a nice [..] community,” Welch said.