And on into Testing

What do you get when you take two stressed out Assistant Principals and attempt to do simple math? A brief panic and a lot of laughter.

After my, relatively, minor issues with the advanced placement exams, I made sure to double and triple check our orders for the Regents exams. Every AP confirmed that I had, indeed, over ordered for every exam. So, why was it that the head of one department and I had a brief moment of panic yesterday?

Follow this conversation and watch where we went wrong ...

"How many rooms do I have for this afternoon's exam?"

A quick check (I have not memorized this data) reveals 19 rooms, each with the appropriate proctor assigned. "Phew" is the response,"it was looking like we needed more rooms."

"Well," I shot back in a sudden burst of fear "lets double check the exam numbers, just in case. I know there are 24 packets of exams in the boxes in the vault -- I doubled checked them just a few minutes ago.

You have 19 rooms. 19 rooms at 25 exams per packet is 475 exams. How many kids are registered?"

"498"

Gulp. "Can you double check that? How many kids per room?"

"About 28."

"Let's see, 475 divided by 28 gives us 17 rooms ..."

Yes, dear reader, you can see that I was very much impaired at this point. My counter part and I panicked for a while and prayed for absentees.

About half an hour later my brain finally kicked me in the rear and shot out "Idiot. 24 packets of exams times 25 exams per packet is 600 exams." Oops. More than enough for our 498 students plus some to spare for another school that did under order.

Only 11 more exam periods to panic over ...