Those who were at the January 23 meeting of the Highland Falls-Fort Montgomery Central School District Board of Education may have walked away from it excited about math.

That’s because at the 45-minute public session Fort Montgomery Elementary School Principal Jacqueline Rodriguez and Highland Falls Intermediate School Principal Yashira Maldonado and Assistant Principal Felecia Kelly spoke about the added attention the study of mathematics is getting in their schools this year.

“We’ve been doing some incredible work in math,” Rodriguez told the board, noting that “math matters”.

“Our goal was to understand why math matters and the impact that the early learning of math concepts has on our children,” the FMES principal said. “Building a strong foundation now leads to success all through their school years as they become lifelong learners.”

The HF-FMCSD is using a new program called Eureka Math 2 (Eureka Squared is how they referred to it). Its creator, Great Minds, bills it as “A Student-Centered Learning Approach”. This is the first year the district has used this new version, and it’s showing results, in both student success, and teacher excitement about using the program.

Alex Hansen is the elementary school’s Math Academic Intervention Specialist (AIS) teacher. She spoke at the meeting about using Eureka Squared. “I have the privilege of being in all of the classes,” she told the board. “I see students and teachers more excited about math now.”

She said that teacher’s confidence in teaching math – “new math is hard” – is soaring. The same goes for parents dealing with math homework: “the math homework book has a parent section. “New math can be scary for parents,” she added.

Hansen spoke about the use of manipulatives (physical objects, like blocks or tiles, which help students learn math concepts by making them concrete and visual) at all grade levels now, as opposed to just the very early grades.

Maldonado brought two eighth grade students with her to talk about how they view the new program. They told the board members that they find the program more engaging and explained that they enjoy working with their classmates. Maldonado backed up their input, saying that sometimes “we lose sight of the power of collaboration”. The students also gave board members some ‘homework’ – worksheets from their curriculum, so that they could see the type of work the upper intermediate school students are doing.

“What’s next?” Rodriguez said. “We will continue to look at data, provide the support needed to keep the excitement high, collaborate between all grade level teams, and listen to the insight our teachers provide.”

Also at the meeting, Maldonado and Kelly provided the board with a bit of good news – even before integrating this new math curriculum the work that district teachers have been doing in math is paying off.

They showed charts with same student growth from third (2022-23) to fourth (2023-24) grades – in third grade students overall showed a 17 percent grade-level proficiency in math. The next school year, fourth grade, they showed 51.9 percent grade-level proficiency. “That’s a bright spot,” Kelly said.

There was a similar increase in math proficiency for sixth (2022-23) graders when they got to seventh (2023-24) grade – 43 percent proficiency to 67 percent proficiency.

“I can tell you from my experience with state testing, that is truly amazing,” Kelly said. Maldonado said things like small group instruction, an academic intervention services ‘push-in” policy, data driven decision making and increased communication with parents, have helped with the success.

The two also showed one more proficiency report. Two different cohorts of third graders (different students) also showed growth – 17 percent math proficiency in 2022-23 to 41.5 percent in 2023-24.

To keep the momentum going, the combined FMES and HFIS have a ‘Math is Fun’ night planned for the Spring, and Mondays in the two schools are deemed as “Math Mondays”, where teachers wear t-shirts that reflect that “Math Is Cool”. The district is also utilizing resources from a company called Math & Movement to bring math activities to young children which supports kinesthetics and math.