When students and staff were allowed to dress up for Halloween when they came to school on Monday, Oct. 31, the math teachers had a plan: They were going to dress as 101 Dalmatians.

“We’ve been talking about it at lunch for a long time. We wanted to find a mass costume, since there are 10 of us in the department,” said math teacher Matt Duffy.

“There was a lot of back-and-forth about it, actually. Originally, [math teacher Susie] Vawter wanted to be Shark Week, which looked very creative, but also looked like a lot of work,” said math teacher Michael Gier. “Like all great ideas we stole it.”

After finding the idea online, the math teachers were in agreement. Many made their costumes themselves.

“I actually borrowed the costume from someone at New Mark, but almost everyone else made theirs. Ruined a white sweater with black ink,” Gier said.

But when the day came, they were missing something: a Cruella de Vil.

“The Cruella costume was the most extensive. We actually looked at one online and it cost $90,” Duffy said.

That was a lot of money compared to the rest of the costumes which cost under $5. The Cruella costume would also have been very difficult to put together because it was much more complicated than the other costumes.

“No one stepped up,” math teacher Katherine Whitaker said.

The costumes were also easy to mistake when there was only one teacher in the room.

“Usually when someone saw the dog catchers it all made sense, but someone thought I was a cow,” said Whitaker.