About 500 Brookline freshmen will walk into Brookline High School on Thursday, Sept. 3, for their first school change since kindergarten.

The Public Schools of Brookline operates eight K-8 schools feeding into one high school. That structure means most students spend nine years in the same building with the same classmates before making a single, large leap. State enrollment data from 2025-26 counted 499 ninth graders and 2,147 students total at BHS.

The scale shift is steep.

BHS eases the landing with several transition supports. Freshmen spend most of their first year in a dedicated ninth-grade building rather than the full campus. Eighth graders can tour BHS before school begins, and current high schoolers return to K-8 schools including Hayes and Lincoln for panels where they answer questions about classes and extracurriculars, Brookline.News reported.

The district's course selection process starts in February of eighth grade. Students receive recommendations from their current teachers in core subjects and choose electives in areas like Career and Technology Education, Performing Arts and Visual Arts.

Brookline.News spoke with four incoming freshmen about the transition. Golda Munzer, 14, attended Lawrence School from kindergarten through eighth grade. She recalled how intercom announcements ending with "Have a legendary day, leopards!" made her feel she had outgrown the building.

"Lawrence is kind of just like a bubble where we knew exactly how it was going to be," Munzer said.

Lola Rhoads, 14, is going from a Hayes School eighth-grade class of fewer than 60 students to a freshman class of roughly 500. Kira Kwong, 14, also from Hayes, said she worried about getting lost on the larger campus. Oz Palchik, 14, a Driscoll School graduate, said he plans to try out for the swim and crew teams and is looking forward to Culinary Exploratory, a course where students cook in a restaurant-style kitchen.

Freshmen will spend most of their first year in the dedicated ninth-grade building before joining the wider BHS campus as sophomores.