In the areas served by the Club over 60% of children score below grade level in math, which is no doubt a tremendous factor in the 30% high school graduation rate. In an effort to help improve math scores, the Club offers a range of programs throughout the school year and summer. This summer, the Club partnered with Math Magic, a student group from Stanford University, to run an intensive six week program for children in K-4th grade. The program's focus is on math, with additional activities aimed at skills in reading and science.

Barbara Mazina, a recent Stanford Grad, got the idea for Math Magic while working as an instructor at F4Ed, a for-profit after school and summer program born out of the University. "The program was very effective and fun for the kids, but was not accessible for many children in need," said Mazina. "I knew there were a lot of kids in other areas of the community who were not as fortunate and needed help. I worked with the Haas Center for Public Service at Stanford and Math Magic was born." Mike Rauta, who founded F4Ed while earning his MBA and Master's in Education at Stanford, envisioned that a sister program would be implemented in a non-profit setting. "With F4Ed's support, we are able to offer Math Magic, which follows the same high quality model as F4Ed, at no cost to the children and schools in East Palo Alto and East Menlo Park. F4Ed supports Math Magic by donating workbooks for the children and by recruiting volunteers from its ranks of trained instructors."

Mazina and her Math Magic team first started working in East Palo Alto two years ago, and began its collaboration with the Club about one year ago. "We use a Singaporean curriculum", says Mazina. "It is structured in a Spiral format and results in the best scores on the TIMMS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study)". We make math fun for children by training instructors to create interactive, engaging lessons. We also make sure to keep our groups small - only 3-5 kids per math instructor. Our goal for the summer program is to prevent summer learning loss, raise children's confidence in their abilities to succeed, and get them excited for the upcoming school year.

For most of the summer, over 40 children came to the Club's McNeil Family Clubhouse in Menlo Park daily to participate in the program. When asked how they liked the Math Magic Summer Camp, Wendy, a seven year old rising first grader said: "math was hard for me last year, but it was my favorite part of the program this summer. It's fun." She is looking forward to going back to school in the fall and applying what she has learned.

Nine year old Andre (whose mother is an eighth grade math teacher but who scored low in the subject on last year's STAR test ), agreed that the program has been fun saying that "Ian (his math instructor) shows me stuff like multiplying, and hundreds". He continued saying "we get to do a lot of other fun activities including making ice cream." And then proceeded to explain how they measured out all the ingredients. When asked if he would participate in the program next summer, he excitedly looked at Mazina and said "if you come back every year".