Boston Public Schools Student Wins State Championship In Wicked Math Year 1

O'Donnell Elementary School Grade 4 student Haytam El Ayoubi has qualified for the Math League National Championship, showing the impact of the Wicked Math Initiative.

Boston Public Schools Student Wins State Championship In Wicked Math Year 1

Boston Public Schools (BPS) celebrates our latest champion math wiz. O'Donnell Elementary School Grade 4 student Haytam El Ayoubi won the Massachusetts Math League State Championship last month after earning the highest score in the competition among Grade 4 students. He will compete in the Math League National Championship on June 13, 2026, at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas. He represents Boston among the nation's top young mathematicians, with support from the City of Boston's Wicked Math initiative.

Mayor Michelle Wu visited the O'Donnell Elementary Math Club on June 10, 2026 to celebrate Haytam's accomplishment and recognize the successful first year of Wicked Math. Wu's visit was both a sendoff for Haytam and a reminder of the opportunities high-quality math enrichment can make available to students.

Throughout the school year, Haytam attended Math Club twice each week before school, demonstrating exceptional dedication, perseverance, and a genuine love of mathematics. He also represented O'Donnell monthly in Math League competitions, consistently challenging himself through advanced problem-solving and mathematical reasoning.

Haytam's success reflects the broader impact of Wicked Math, the City of Boston's initiative to expand access to advanced math programming across BPS. Launched in the 2025-26 school year through a partnership among EdVestors, The Calculus Project, the Young People's Project (YPP), and the BPS STEM Department, Wicked Math is helping build a stronger citywide math culture and ensuring students who love math have opportunities to deepen their learning inside and outside the classroom.

In its first year, Wicked Math established math clubs at 11 BPS schools, engaged hundreds of students in enrichment opportunities, hired 19 student math mentors through YPP, recruited students for The Calculus Project's summer program at MIT, and provided 11 professional development sessions for 161 BPS math educators.

The O'Donnell Elementary Math Club, led by Taylor O'Brien and Zhi Wang, has been one of the initiative's standout programs. The school's overall math performance has surpassed pre-pandemic levels, improving by 10 percentage points over the past two years.

As we celebrate Haytam's remarkable accomplishment, we also encourage students, families, and educators across Boston to get involved in the next chapter of Wicked Math. Opportunities include summer math programming, school-based math clubs, mentoring, competitions, and advanced learning pathways launching for the 2026-27 school year.

Haytam's achievement demonstrates what is possible when students are given opportunities to explore their passion for mathematics. As he prepares to compete against the country's best young problem-solvers, the entire BPS community is cheering him on and looking forward to welcoming him home after representing Boston with pride.

Science Materials Center

Campbell Resource Center, 1216 Dorchester Avenue, 2nd Floor

(tel) 617-635-8750 | (email) BPSsciencematerials@bostonpublicschools.org | (hours) 7:30am-3:00pm and by appointment

Science Materials Manager

Kings Otubu

Materials Technicians

Ural Daye, Isrrael Intriago, and Felix Morales

Ordering Information for K-8 Units and Animals

We are taking orders for SY26-27! Only teachers who place orders will receive science kits and materials.

To order your K-8 kits, click here.

Not sure what to order: Reference the most recent science instructional unit schedule here.

Please Note: Living Materials must be ordered by the school. The science department will no longer order living materials. For guidance on how to order living materials, click here.

For general questions, please check out our FAQs document. If you still do not see the answer you were looking for, email our materials manager, Kings Otubu, at BPSsciencematerials@bostonpublicschools.org.

Drop Off and Pick-Up Schedules

The schedule is subject to change. A detailed schedule will be emailed out to teachers before the start of each window. Please have your kits ready to go the day before your scheduled pick-up. See below for a general idea of the drop off and pick up windows.

Fall

Drop Off: mid August - begin September

Winter

Drop Off: end November - begin December

Pick-Up: end December

Spring

Drop Off: begin to mid March

Pick-Up: end March

End of Year

Final Pick-Up: mid to end June

How can you support our Instructional Materials Technicians?

Without instructional materials to engage our students, authentic hands-on science teaching and learning would come to a screeching halt. Our technicians work behind the scenes to refurbish every unit so they are like "new" when it arrives in your classroom. Please be considerate and re-package the materials with care -- they should come back used, but not abused.

Our techs do their best to conserve materials. Messes take a long time to clean and usually mean something is damaged. We hope you understand taking a few moments to carefully prepare your units for return can help keep costs down and keep our techs safe!