Minutes of the October 7, 1999 General Meeting of AMAPS

1.  Marvin Schneider welcomed everyone to the first general meeting of the school year.
2.  Marvin welcomed the new math APs in attendance including Joy Hsiao of Brooklyn Tech, 
     Gary Beister of Humanities, Kathy Kafalos of Newtown, Susan Sladowski of Bayside, 
     Sonia Buszwatiuk of Bryant, Ellen Mandel of Campus Magnet and 
     Helena Conti of Springfield Gardens.  He apologized if he missed anyone.
3.  Marvin lamented the loss of some executive board members... 
     VP Betty McCullough who became a principal, treasurer Maureen Henry and 
     executive board member Nancy Sigmund who both moved on to jobs on Long Island.  
4.  At the last executive board meeting, the following replacements were selected:  
     from the Bronx, John Waters of Bronx Science and Ken Duggan of Clinton 
     were added to the executive board.  Jeff Shermack of Tilden is the new VP 
     for academic schools and Len Margulies of New Utrecht is the new treasurer.  
     Marvin said we still need representation from Staten Island.
5.  Len Margulies spoke and asked members to pay their dues. 
     Dues for current assistant principals are $20 and $10 for retirees.  
6.  A representative of the Queens HS Office, Brian Jetter (Funded Programs)
     was introduced as the Queens HS Office representative.  The AMAPS
     Math A calendar of lessons was presented to the Queens APs yesterday and 
     was very well received.  According to Howard Brenner, BASIS will also be 
     using the Math A document prepared by AMAPS.  
     Cheryl Perl, director of funded programs for Manhattan was also introduced.  
     Manhattan assistant principals are currently reviewing this document and 
     it will be placed on the Manhattan Superintendent's website.  
     The document is being presented to the Bronx Superintendent and the Bronx math APs.
7.  Marvin reminded everyone that the AMAPS website is up and running and 
     should be looked at.  Our address is amaps.org.  
8.  There was a discussion at the last Executive Board meeting regarding 
     acceleration credit once Math A begins.  The Executive Board suggested 
     a uniform proficiency exam.  As President, Marvin said he would send a letter to 
     the 5 high school superintendents to begin a positive dialogue about 
     the proficiency exam.  It was suggested that the Math A outline be made available 
     to all middle schools as well.  Sharon Hoosak and Lorraine Largmann said 
     that they would see to it that the outline is sent to all of the district superintendents.
9.  It was announced that Nancy Sigmund will be honored on November 2 by Newtown HS.  
     Further information about the fete is available from Lorraine Largmann.  
10. Marvin gave an impassioned plea urging members to look at mathematics 
      humanistically and not through statistics.  APs have to educate their supervisors 
      not to be bean counters, but to look at math from an educational point of view and 
      not just in statistical terms.
11. Marvin introduced Judy Walsh, now the director of instruction for BASIS, 
      who spoke about the positive reception mathematics has at BASIS and 
      with their new superintendent, Ms. Albanese-DePinto.  
      Annie Nadel, also from BASIS, spoke about professional development in BASIS. 
12. Marvin thanked our host, Texas Instruments and their (our) representative, 
      Jason Henderson.  Jason spoke briefly and then answered a question 
      posed about the difference between the TI-83 and the TI-83+.  He said that 
      they are the same except that the 83+ is electronically upgradable.  He then 
      introduced Ellen Hook who gave the professional presentation on the different 
      capabilities of different graphing calculators.  She was very well prepared and 
      exceptionally well received.