Libby school board adopts new math curriculum
Students in the Libby School District will begin learning math in a new way following a decision Monday by the school board to adopt a new curriculum aimed at meeting Common Core standards.
The new standards are aimed at teaching students to be “fluent” in math, said district curriculum director Kaide Dodson. Instead of simply memorizing processes, the goal is to reach an understanding of how those processes work, she said.
“For some of us adults it’s difficult, because we were taught how to do math but we weren’t taught why we do it,” said district superintendent Craig Barringer.
The new curriculum will focus on multiple ways of solving problems and will be consistent across all grade levels.
“The beauty of this whole thing as I see it is it’s going to be K-12,” Barringer said.
That will pay off when students started out on the new curriculum begin taking more complex math classes at the high school level, because the concepts taught in elementary classes will have given them “number sense,” said high school principal Ruth VanWorth-Rogers.
Homework will be a little different, Dodson said, with fewer problems to solve, but those problems will be more in-depth and will require students to show how they reached their solutions.
Teachers have been largely supportive of the proposal, Dodson said.
“There’s one particular grade level that’s just not there yet, but otherwise it’s K through 12,” she said.
The curriculum, developed by the New York State Education Department, is available online at www.EngageNY.org and will not require the purchase of new textbooks. The cost, which includes using the district’s copy machines to print pages downloaded from the website, is estimated at $4,000 to $6,000, significantly less than the cost of new books, Barringer said. The savings will go toward training teachers in the new curriculum, he said.
In other business, the board:
Approved the purchase of new textbooks for the high school advanced biology class. The books that will be replaced were purchased in 1998 and are no longer available. Approximately 40 books will be purchased at a cost of around $70 each.
Accepted the resignation of fourth-grade teacher Ashley Brickey, who is moving out of the district with her family.
Hired Monica Antone as a fifth-grade teacher and Amanda Gasvoda as an elementary teacher for either kindergarten or fourth grade.
Approved the following assistant coaches for the fall and winter sports seasons at Libby High School: Jeni Jeresek, volleyball; Phil Nelson, football; and Wally Winslow, girls’ basketball.
Renewed contracts with Brian Adams as part-time school psychologist and Els O’Rourke as part-time physical therapist.
Received a report from Barringer that the district is moving to an online application system for prospective employees. The system will cost around $1,500 per year and is expected to encourage more applications and make for easier access to applications by administrators.