Benefits and Drawbacks to being a "small learning community"

Now in general small learning communities are a truly great idea. That being said there are some things that can get really annoying about them, so I'm going to list some of the pros and cons as I see them.

Pros

1. Students and teachers really get to know each other
• Aside from the obvious benefits this can also lead to greater overall control of the student body because everyone knows everyone (pretty much).
• This means students are less likely to slip through the cracks
• It is really easy to catch students skipping, etc.
  
2. Collaboration becomes far easier in the core subjects because students can be grouped together allowing classes to be coordinated
3. Classes tend to be smaller
4. Students get more personalized attention
5. I am the (un)official chair of the Social Studies department*(see note)
   

Cons

1. A lot of times fewer classes can be offered (the solution here is to have several small learning communities in a larger school building together so that there can be cross pollination when it comes to electives)
2. Teachers have to teach multiple classes (What I mean here is that I teach 3 different classes across 3 different periods, unlike my friend who only had to teach one class three different times last semester)
3. I have to be on multiple committees (I am on the recruitment and awards committees - I was assigned them)
4. Less able to have sports teams and clubs (this can also be solved by having multiple small learning communities grouped together into larger groups overall)

*Note: I went to a social studies committee chair meeting yesterday afternoon and it was actually pretty cool because it wasn't actually professional development. Instead we were talking to the head of social studies in DC and he was asking questions about how we should test students, how to get kids from middle school to high school, and other interesting stuff like that. A lot of the department chairs were really cool and it is a meeting that I would like to go to again if possible and something that I would like to participate more in if possible. This might be the way to get my whole wanting to be involved with policy thing out while still being in the classroom. Maybe I want to try and become a department chair at a larger high school or something (though I'm sure that would have plenty of drawbacks)