As funding cuts continue to affect institutions of higher education across the country, NHP remains no exception to the rule. To save on increasing costs within the school and the wider district, New Hyde Park Memorial High School will no longer offer mathematics courses to its students, effective immediately. 

According to a strongly-worded email from central administration leaked by the New Hyde Park I.T. department, “[f]rankly, this has quite literally nothing to do with the recent federal funding cuts. Ever since they added letters, we’ve all known that math has become essentially useless. I mean, name me one time you’ve used the quadratic formula in your personal life. In fact, here’s some math for you all. Less money for math = more money for us. Need I say more?”

Before this change, NHP offered a plethora of math courses after 6th grade. Sequentially, starting in 7th grade, students were able to take Pre-Algebra, Algebra I, Geometry, Algebra II, Pre-Calculus, and AP Calculus AB or BC. These courses have all been eliminated from the school curriculum entirely. This would mean that the typical student’s math education would stop at advanced arithmetic, but local elementary schools have also eliminated their math curriculums, citing similar concerns about funding. This has had significant impacts on the mathematical skills of local students. I was told to obtain three quotes to help verify this claim, but I’m not entirely sure how many that is. Perhaps the king of quotes will add some later. 

When The Chariot reached out to various teachers in the former mathematics department, it got no reply. This is likely due to the fact that all math teachers have been evicted from school premises. Their IDs have been revoked. Given that most NHP teachers do in fact live in the building, the teachers have essentially lost their homes. There is some good news, however. Traffic in the math department hallway has significantly decreased. Unfortunately, many more random history, world language and English classes have been relocated to the math hallway, so this is likely temporary. 

Overall, math education is integral for a brighter future, so it’s a shame that the curriculum has become so differential. Perhaps the old curriculum was too formulaic and too linear, but there must be a limit to this madness. This hyperbolic, radical rhetoric against mathematics simply is not rational. It’s a slippery slope from pointing out the flaws in the roots of the curriculum to banning mathematics altogether. It seems to have all come full-circle—or square? I’m not sure.