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My district has gone to requiring 9th graders take chemistry, with the generally required difficulty often found in junior/senior level classes.  While it has been an adventure...the most challenging aspect is that many of the students have poor math skills and have great difficulty doing well, because they are so bad at math.   For example we just had our gas laws test.  Many students did poorly.  A lot of the issues were mathematical and not a lack of understanding of the material.  Like they would set the problems up correctly and then solve them wrong.   It seems like no matter what I do, they don't come around and its getting extremely frustrating.  What do you do to help cope with these issues?

Is algebra still a pre-requisite? That is necessary for students to even have a chance in chemistry...

Unfortunately not. They just blindly put all 9th graders into chemistry. I have sped kids with a 3rd or 4th Grade math/reading level in class.

I use Modeling Instruction and have found that even students with poor math skills find success.  For example, every single one of my students can tell me what happens to pressure when we increase volume, and why.  Even my lowest students know how to find the new pressure mathematically without using "the equation" (they do, but they don't realize they do - hard to explain on a forum).  I do introduce the equations so that those who will continue further in chemistry will know them and recognize them, but I don't expect every single regurgitate them for me.  They also know a whole lot more about linear functions - they still struggle with them, but they have made huge improvements, which makes the math teachers happy. There are Modeling Instruction workshops all over the country during the summer - I definitely recommend checking them out.  modelinginstruction.org

Is there possibly an issue with confidence in mathematics? Sometimes students have issues because they aren't sure how to connect the formulas to real life applications, so perhaps focusing on the units (such as crossing out units in stoichiometric problems) or using images may help. I am interested to hear what worked and what didn't, because this is a common problem with many general chemistry high school courses.

In the school that I am involved with, we work closely with the math teachers. Although our standards are not the same, we know that science and math are naturally integrated together. We take advantage of knowing the scope and sequence that the math teachers are using in their classroom, and try to plan ours around when our students are learning/reviewing important materials that are going to impact their understanding of what is going on in our class. It is not always possible to plan things out this way, but we have seen growth since we have begun working together.