POULSBO — Parents, students, staff and community members have until May 10 to submit written comments concerning a proposed secondary math curriculum that will be used at North Kitsap high schools if adopted by the school board.

The North Kitsap School District Math Adoption Committee’s preferred curriculum, College Preparatory Mathematics produced by non-profit CPM Educational Program Publishers, will be available for review in the curriculum office at the NKSD Administrative Support Services Center on Caldart Avenue.

The NKSD board is expected to make a decision on the issue at its May 11 meeting.

“More students at higher levels of math, as much as possible and as soon as possible,” NKSD executive director of teaching and learning MaryLou Murphy said April 27 of the overall goal of the curriculum switch.

Murphy’s comments came during a NKSD board meeting with members of the MAC in the audience offering support.

The quest for improvement began more than three years ago after numerous district, state and nationwide studies showed an increasing number of students were leaving high school unprepared for college-level math and therefore, needed remedial classes.

In North Kitsap, the MAC began work to solidify a sequentially aligned K-12 curriculum that aims to better prepare students for the mathematical needs of the 21st century, Murphy said.

If the CPM curriculum is adopted, it will be the finishing touch of the K-12 sequence.

In 2004, the MAC implemented the “Investigations in Number, Data and Space” curriculum at the kindergarten through fifth-grade levels of the NKSD. Then, at the junior highs in 2005, the “Connected Math Project” curriculum was implemented.

The high school level CPM curriculum is a more student-centered approach to mathematics. Its teaching methods involve more group work and hands-on activities than the traditional curriculums that are currently taught at NKHS, MAC member and NKHS math teacher Jon Gompert Nelson said.

Nelson also noted that the curriculum change could be more of an adjustment for some teachers than it would be for many students.

If the CPM curriculum is adopted, NKHS math teachers will undergo four days of training in August and an additional three or four sessions throughout the year, Murphy said.

During recent visits to regional school districts using the CPM curriculum, Murphy said “it worked extremely well.”

“I need data that says (students) are doing better or they are doing worse,” NKSD board director Ed Strickland said, adding that he felt CPM is a “great program,” but the district needs a means to measure progress. “We’ve been leaving that piece out in this district.”

Strickland’s concern was just one of many that the school board grilled Murphy and the MAC on during an hour-long discussion at the April 27 meeting. But director Tom Anderson was the only school board voice which seemed to question the curriculum choice.

“Maybe we could pilot (the curriculum), see how it works and then we can do some comparative data to see if it’s working,” Anderson suggested, cautioning that rushing in could initiate a loss of valuable teachers. “There are problem areas (in CPM) that we ought to look at.”

Anderson pointed out a perceived weakness in CPM’s practice problems and a lack of rigor in the curriculum’s context development as two of his primary concerns following consultations with math teaching colleagues.

He also questioned how well CPM would support an honors program as well as how well it would align with the science courses at NKHS — two questions that Murphy couldn’t immediately answer.

Those questions along with any that surface through community review of the curriculum will be considered in the school board’s final decision of approval May 11.

If the curriculum is adopted, it will be phased in one year at a time starting at the Algebra I level at the beginning of the 2006-2007 school year, Murphy said.