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TUSD to place Amplify Desmos math on 30-day public review after pilot; some parents urge focus on basic fluency
Summary
After a pilot that recommended Amplify Desmos Math with a 97.8% first-choice rating, the TUSD board approved a 30-day public review. A parent and educators urged attention to math fact fluency and supports for multilingual and special-needs learners.
The Tustin Unified School District Board approved placing Amplify Desmos Math on a 30-day public review for elementary instructional materials, following a district pilot and a strong recommendation from a teacher review team.
Karen Knutson, the district’s elementary coordinator, told the board the pilot team — 54 teachers and 16 specialists representing all elementary schools — arrived at a strong consensus, with Amplify receiving a 97.8% first-choice recommendation and averaging 42 out of 45 possible rubric points across alignment and local nonnegotiables.
"Students showed increased engagement and deeper sense-making," pilot staff said, noting teachers praised the program’s print and digital materials, differentiation tools and the Desmos technology that supports visualization.
The board set the public review to run March 12–April 24 and invited public comment during that window.
At public comment, community member Nikita Ganatra urged the board to prioritize fluency with basic facts, saying decades of research and cognitive science show automaticity frees working memory for higher-order reasoning. "When basic facts and foundational procedures are automatic, students can use their mental energy to understand multistep problems," Ganatra told the board, and she warned that some approaches (she named CGI) do not serve multilingual learners or students with disabilities as well.
Pilot presenters and students defended the Desmos-powered approach. A student from Legacy described classroom use of Desmos to visualize complex concepts and said the platform supported deeper conceptual understanding.
Board members thanked pilot teachers and emphasized the public-review process as a chance for parents and educators to examine materials and submit feedback before a final adoption decision.
What’s next: the materials will be available for public inspection and comment through April 24; staff will compile feedback for the board before any adoption vote.
