Trustees Approve Revised SIFE Math Fundamentals Proposal

A revised course proposal for SIFE (Students with Interrupted Formal Instruction) Math Fundamentals at Huntington High School has been approved by the Huntington School Board. Annual enrollment in the full year course is expected to total about 20 ninth graders in the 2024/25 school year.

Course units of study include US Currency and Decimal Operations, Add & Subtract Fractions, Multiply and Divide Fractions, Rate and Rations, Integers, Coordinate Plan Expressions and Equations.

Beth McCoy, Huntington UFSD’s assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction outlined the revised course proposal during a public meeting of trustees this past Monday night at the Jack Abrams STEM Magnet School auditorium. The Subject Matter Council approved the proposal on November 14 and the Educational Development Committee gave its consent on February 7, setting the stage for action by trustees.

“Previously, SIFE (Students with Interrupted Formal Instruction) students were placed in the ENL SIFE Basic Algebra course,” states the course rationale provided to trustees. “Last year, we partnered with New York State and implemented the NYS Bridges curriculum, which consists of elementary Number Sense content. By doing that, students from SIFE ENL Basic Algebra were supposed to be enrolled this year in ENL Basic Algebra. Therefore, not earning course credit because the course names were the same even though the content was different. To rectify this for students to earn course credit, we changed the names to ENL Algebra 1A and ENL Algebra 1B (Algebra Regents).”

Trustees gave their approval to offer courses titled SIFE Math Fundamentals, ENL Basic Algebra and ENL Algebra 1(Algebra Regents). “The names of these courses reflect the content taught in each of the classes,” according to the revised course proposal. “Students would receive three math credits for this path.”

Elementary “number sense” refers to the “ability to be flexible with numbers,” according to the Math’s No Problem website. “It helps children understand both how our number system works and how numbers relate to each other. Children who develop number sense have a range of mathematical strategies at their disposal.”