Supervisor highlights AP economics consolidation; senior presents linear algebra research on entanglement

Greg Ashoff, who identified himself as West Essex math and business supervisor, delivered the department's annual update to the board on March 2, naming two retiring teachers and describing curriculum and extracurricular work.

Ashoff said the curriculum committee approved combining AP macroeconomics and AP microeconomics into a single AP economics course to create a unified, holistic course with the aim of improving AP outcomes. He described student supports including NJSLA and NJGPA boot camps, use of i-Ready at the middle-school level, and the Atlas curriculum tool to align interdisciplinary standards.

Ashoff also highlighted extracurricular participation — DECA, FBLA, math honor society and computer science club — and named top AMC 8 performers in middle school: Elijah Gao, Oscar Trezepla and Tyler Rapp.

Ashoff introduced senior Sienna Jacobs, who presented her independent study on linear algebra and its application to quantum entanglement. Jacobs explained eigenvalues, tensor products and how entangled states cannot be written as simple products of smaller vectors. "What is quantum entanglement? It's where 2 or more particles become so deeply linked that they share a single unified quantum state," Jacobs said during her presentation. In exchange after the presentation board members asked whether her work related to quantum computing; Jacobs said she had explored binary representations and had committed to study aerospace engineering at the University of Michigan.

The board praised the student presentation and thanked staff and students for recent events and competitions.