Going to a small school has many benefits and also many negatives. As many students here know, Freedom is a small school compared to the ones surrounding it. Students who have gone here their whole school career can be unaware of how different their school is. Every school has differences, however, no school is necessarily better than the other. Every school has qualities students wish to change and qualities the students could not imagine their education without.

The biggest difference, which is also the most obvious, is the overall class size. Freedom is made up of New Sewickley, Conway and Freedom. Yet, their class sizes are still among the smallest compared to the schools around the district. To put it into perspective, Seneca Valley has more kids in their average graduating class than Freedom has in the entire high school. With more students comes more opportunities. However, having more students is not always a good thing. Imagine going through your entire school experience, sitting at graduation, and hearing the names of students you have never talked to or seen once. Graduation would also take a very long time having to get through so many kids. 

Having a small number of students means Freedom does not need as many buildings to hold them. Some schools around Freedom have multiple elementary buildings that funnel into multiple middle schools, for them all to come together to the same high school. Freedom has one building for each school, and they are all located on the same campus. One downfall to having a lower number of students can be the amount of funding the school gets. Freedom is by no means a poor school, but compared to Seneca Valley and North Allegheny, the school does not get as much funding as they do. Therefore, Freedom, in many different aspects, is not able to offer as much as these bigger schools.

School size plays an important part in each advantage and disadvantage. Without having a lot of students, Freedom’s sports teams do not have the opportunity to be as good as some of the schools around the area. For some sports, Freedom is lucky if they have enough students even to form a team, whereas other schools sometimes have multiple teams or have to hold tryouts for the students wanting to participate. Being able to try out for a team better ensures that the players a team has are the best players of the school. There are also more opportunities to join a variety of different sports such as water polo, rowing and lacrosse. Sports become more competitive for other schools playing at a higher level, and students can be recognized for their accomplishments more. Colleges are drawn to schools of bigger size, therefore to get recognized at Freedom, one would likely have to be on a travel or club team. 

Schools that have more students are also able to offer more classes. Schools around the area have more variety of math courses and science courses. Based on the schools around Freedom, which can offer more college in high school courses and Advanced Placement (AP) classes, Freedom students are behind in their academics. Many students have had to travel outside of the school district to take classes, especially in math. By not having enough teachers or students to participate, class choices are limited. Some classes only have one block to pick from, such as Spanish 4 and AP Calculus. This can make it difficult for students who want to take other classes. 

Although every school has its pros and cons, no school is better than the other. Freedom is an overall small school, leaving the students with not as many options or opportunities. However, having more is not always better. Due to Freedom’s small student population, the school can offer things that bigger schools cannot, such as the school’s overall student-to-teacher ratio. By having fewer students, teachers can form closer bonds with their students, which can be a huge benefit. Another benefit is that by not having as many students in a class struggling students can get more help if needed. Freedom operates on a block schedule, which prepares students for their future college classes, as they will last longer than a typical high school period. Freedom also does not do midterms and finals, which can be looked at as both a pro and a con. However, the pro of it is that students can go through the year and not have to worry about taking midterms and finals. 

Freedom is very different compared to the neighboring schools. Although some schools are as close as 10 minutes down the road to maybe even up to 45 minutes, Freedom students are confined to the walls of their school and tend to lose sight of how unique the school is.