The Great Falls Public Schools board adopted new math curriculum materials for grades K-6 during their May 12 meeting.

Rachel Cutler, elementary curriculum coordinator, told the board during their April 28 meeting that Amplify Desmos was the top scored resource through the selection process with the district’s math committee.

She said during that meeting that the estimated cost was $950,000 for a five-year purchase that included digital access for teachers and students, blended with some written work materials. The materials also include hard copy teacher manuals, daily presentation guides, kits, online formative and summative assessments.

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At that time, they were still determining plans for student activity books and there would be additional costs for professional development training on the new materials.

During the May 12 meeting, Cutler said the district had negotiated the cost down to $910,650.

Cutler told the board she’d received no additional feedback on the materials in the two weeks they were on display in the district’s curriculum office.

During the April 28 school board meeting, Cutler said that in looking for any new curriculum resources and materials, they start with research and data. They looked at education reports and Bozeman and Belgrade classrooms that were using materials the district was interested in.

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From there, Cutler said they brought a rubric process to the district’s K-12 math committee, asking what they were looking for in new materials. The committee gave a lot of feedback that Culter said they refined into a review tool to evaluate the options.

They started with 11 math curriculum resources and narrowed those down to five in December for teachers and the community to view.

Cutler said there wasn’t as much public participation as she would have liked, but they had some.

On the elementary side, there were two clear favorites that rose to the top, Amplify Desmos and McGraw Hill Reveal.

The math committee took a vote with 80 percent choosing Amplify and 20 percent for McGraw Hill, she told the board in April.

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Teachers said the Amplify materials aligned with how they taught math and the intervention resources were good.

During the April meeting, Paige Turoski, school board member thanked the district staff involved in the process, which she also participated in.

There was no other board discussion on the materials or public comment in April.

The selected materials were publicly available for review in the curriculum office for two weeks from the April 28 meeting to the May 12 board purchase decision.

Judith Mortensen asking during public comment how the materials had been accepted by high school teachers and if they viewed it as a springboard for the upper grades.

Cutler said much of the beliefs developed by K-12 math teachers for instruction and the new standards were found in the Amplify Desmos materials.

Beckie Frisbee, GFPS’ secondary curriculum coordinator, said that high school math teachers tested some of the materials, but they currently only go up to algebra so it can’t be used at the middle and high school level.

She said despite that, they liked what they saw and wish it was an option for secondary materials.

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Frisbee said that the company is working to develop math materials for the higher grades, so that may be an option in the future.

She said they’re planning to pilot some secondary math materials and come to the board in March 2026 with an update.

The board voted unanimously to approve the Amplify Desmos elementary math materials.

The board also approved new math and computer science “know-understand-dos” that represent the standards adopted by the Montana Board of Public Education.

Frisbee said she’d received no comment on the KUDs since they were first presented in April.

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District teachers worked through the state standards to develop workable documents for teachers to use in helping students learn.

They’re also being used as the district chooses the new secondary math materials, Frisbee said, as the elementary teachers did in selected their new materials.

The district began its effort to develop new math standards in 2022 with the math task force that included K-12 math teachers from across the district.

They looked at data and best practices and also pushed the task force into all schools with some coaching and new practices.

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In the summer of 2024, the state released a draft of the new math standards that were expected to be approved within a few months, but instead they were approved in March 2025, leaving the district waiting on some drafts, Culter told the school board in April.

Cutler said that overall, some elements were added, but some condensed so there are now seven overarching standrds.

Language was updated for clarity and a larger focus was placed on problem solving and real world application, Cutler said, plus clarifying fluency in each grade level.

Montana standards were last updated in 2011, Cutler said, and the bulk of the changes was in the high school standards.

She said they essentially took a bank of standards and separated them into two buckets: the core foundational standards every student needs and core-plus standards for those students could pursue for more advanced coursework.

Some content areas were reorganized and some classes were more integrated through the update.