MANCHESTER — A school board subcommittee took a field trip Tuesday, holding a meeting at Southside Middle School to give parents a chance to provide feedback directly to the board and district officials.

About a dozen parents attended the meeting of the Curriculum and Instruction Committee, which subcommittee chairman Sarah Ambrogi called “an experiment.”

Most of the parents who spoke expressed a common concern: the district's use of the Everyday Mathematics curriculum was leaving middle school students ill-prepared for traditional math courses.

The curriculum, which is used in city schools up through grade 5, seeks to teach math concepts through patterns and games, rather than through memorization of formulas and tables.

The problem, according to the parents, was that there was little or no transition when the students entered sixth grade and were expected to solve traditional math problems.

“It's unacceptable to me that a sixth-grader, when they're asked what's six times seven, they're counting their fingers,” said Samantha Spezeski, the parent of a seventh-grade student. “I've had a teacher tell me (the students) really don't need to know their multiplication tables.”

Parent Leslie Want said the concepts in Everyday Math make it hard for parents to help their kids. “It completely alienates parents from the teaching,” she said. “It teaches these magical things, but it doesn't help them to understand the structure of numbers.”

District officials acknowledged that there is a lack of integration between elementary and middle school math programs, and Assistant Superintendent Michael Tursi said there were no plans to integrate the programs “on the horizon.”

Both Tursi and Superintendent Thomas Brennan acknowledged that there wasn't enough communication between the elementary school teachers and their middle school counterparts, an issue that was exacerbated by the district's budget problems.

Brennan said such coordination would fall in the category of professional development, the budget for which has been largely allocated to cover basic salaries.

“I think that's one of the issues we need to deal with in collective bargaining,” Brennan said. “We currently have three days beyond the 180 (in the school year). We walk a fine line between meeting those standards and finding instructional continuity. We need more time in the contract.”

The Everyday Mathematics curriculum was developed at the University of Chicago, and districts first began implementing the program about a decade ago. Since then it's been adopted in hundreds of districts around the country, including in Bedford and many other districts in New Hampshire.

The curriculum has also generated controversy, with some parents and educators criticizing its unorthodox approach, and some districts rejecting the curriculum and returning to more traditional mathematics education.

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Ted Siefer may be reached at tsiefer@unionleader.com.