Riverhead Central Schools

October 11, 2003

Riverhead Central School District has received an important new grant to help enhance its middle school math curriculum. An $11.5 million grant by the National Science Foundation (NSF) is to be distributed over the course of five years to a consortium of ten schools on Long Island (Riverhead, Amityville, Brentwood, Freeport, Hempstead, Longwood, Uniondale, Westbury, William Floyd and Wyandanch). The NSF grant will be administered by Hofstra and Stony Brook Universites and include services from Brookhaven National Laboratory.

The grant is designed to assist math teachers in the consortium by arming them with the most current and effective teaching methods and materials available in an effort to make math and its relationship to science and technology more meaningful and exciting to middle level students.

A hoped-for by-product of the grant program would be an improvement in the overall test scores on the eighth grade math test. Since state and national testing has begun, eighth grade students across the country have experienced little improvement in their test scores, despite an overall effort on the part of the schools. This grant will target the teachers and families of students at this grade level in an attempt to improve the students’ overall level of learning.

"We're very excited to be a part of this grant," states Peggie Staib, the Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum and Instruction at the Riverhead Schools. "This grant will open up a number of avenues of instruction that will benefit our teachers and students in the area of math. Our teachers will receive support materials and instruction in the new methods and techniques that will directly affect the ability of our students to make the connections they need to be able to make math more meaningful. It will also, hopefully, provide us with access to better and more up-to-date curriculum materials. We’re also hoping this will spill over into science and technology and give us access to the materials produced by the National Science Foundation, which are excellent but also very expensive."

The Riverhead District has systematically been reviewing and upgrading each area of the curriculum to make sure that it is aligned with the new standards and testing. In his message to the parents and students in the district’s September newsletter (see the September Superintendent's Message at www.riverhead.net).

Superintendent of Schools George L. Duffy III wrote "This year our new Language Arts program, which utilizes a balanced literacy approach, is in full implementation in each of our elementary schools. Last year and over the summer a task force of K-12 teachers and members of the administrative staff began examining the best practice for the instruction of mathematics. The task force will make recommendations, supported by research and data, to improve the instructional program.”

This grant when it's fully functional will be just one more effort to improve the math curriculum for all of the district's children.

One of the criteria for the National Science Foundation's grant, which included 287 proposals and only 7 recipients nationwide, was, according to staff writer John Hildebrand in his October 8th article in Newsday, "aimed at improving math skills and scores among middle-school students in 10 under-funded districts across Long Island."

Mr. Duffy and Board of Education member Lori Montefusco are also part of Senator Kenneth LaValle’s financial committee that has been formed to examine changes to school funding by the State that have been found to be uniformly unfair.

"I will be participating as a member of this committee to ensure that the Riverhead Central School District is represented,” writes Mr. Duffy in his message. “I will work toward the appropriate funding of education and make certain that the needs of the Riverhead School Community are heard."

This National Science Foundation grant was part of the Foundation's Math, Science and Technology partnerships program. The grants are divided into four categories and this targeted grant presented to Hofstra University was the third largest of the seven grants funded nationwide.

Assistant Superintendent Peggie Staib will be making a presentation to the Board of Education concerning the NSF grant at its October 14th board meeting. Mrs. Staib, Riverhead Middle School Principal Andrea Pekar and Pat Passanante, the Assistant Chairperson of math at the middle school, recently met with representatives of the consortium at Stony Brook Univesity. The grant was announced officially at a press conference on Wednesday, October 8, which included Senator Charles Schumer and Representative Carolyn McCarthy, who were instrumental in bringing the grant to New York.

Photo caption:
Riverhead Middle School math teacher Pat Passanante teaching a math class.