Minutes of Spring Meeting May 13, 2004

1. The meeting was held at Prince House in Saugus. Pizza, salad, and soda were served.

2. Roll call - Thirty-one coaches and officers representing Twenty-five teams.

3. Minutes of the fall meeting were distributed and unanimously approved as written.

4. Tabulator, Bob Velevis, will stay as tabulator. Coaches typing the names made his job easier. He asked VP’s to please make sure they are timely in mailing the results.

5. Bob Velevis of Masconomet, Barbara Lees of Essex, and Barbara Neal of Andover will all be retiring from teaching at their schools.

6. Webmaster, Kip Bryant, reported that PDF files are more accurate. The top school will be posted on the site. Coaches voted to stay with commercial site, www.imlem.org

7. Treasurer's report, presented by Kelly McCormack: Income from 54 teams + interest = $10,193.23. Balance as of May 3, 2004 is $4562.78. This compares to $4637 in 2003 and $4614 in 2002. Expenses from the spring meeting (including trophies and plaques = apx. $1500) will come out of the balance. The report was approved unanimously.

8. Test Writer, Kent Findell, had harder questions after meet 1. Gauging difficulty is hardest. Since Kent attempts to create one easy and one difficult problem per category, it was determined that what we as adults think is easy/hard is different than what kids think. We are asking that all VP’s email Kent directly next year to inform him of which questions were found easy and which difficult by the students. He can use this information to help gauge future questions.

9. ESL concerns: After much discussion, it was realized that math terms are not the difficulty, but the colloquial terms, such as golf ball “dimples.” Teachers of students who do not have English as their first language should directly email Kent after meets if there were words that proved difficult. Kent will use this information to adjust future meets.

10. Feedback regarding counting problems: Overall reaction positive. Mystery had them. Possibility of increasing counting problems next year.

11. It was decided to keep the same topics for 2004-2005, but meet 3 was too difficult and will be adjusted.

12. Divisions for 2004 – 2005 were distributed. Accepted.

13. Nominations for officers were called for. It was moved and unanimously approved to maintain the President, Test Writer, Treasurer, Webmaster, and Tabulator as is.

14. Suggestion for large teams: Many large schools have intramural math teams which compete against each other within their school a week after the meets.

15. New coach’s manual developed by Reading-Parker was given to Kip.

Respectfully submitted,

Tony Biscardi

President