Chinese Delegation Visiting Bloomfield Schools

Educators from Shenzhen city will scope four Bloomfield schools over three weeks

More than two dozen Chinese educators will get a glimpse of the American education system during their three-week visit to Bloomfield schools. The mix of principals and teachers from Shenzhen city, a province north of Hong Kong, will tour Bloomfield Middle and High School, as well as Demarest and Brookdale Elementary Schools to observe in-classroom teaching and partake in educational workshops. This is the second visit to Bloomfield for the Chinese delegation, which met with school administrators Monday over lunch. A different group was in town for 10 days in June. "Education is quite different between China and the U.S.," said Gary Han, manager of the training program of Sunels International, the business consulting firm that organized …

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Vote at Regular Polling Place in Bloomfield

Normal polling places open Tuesday in Bloomfield from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Bloomfield residents will be able to vote Tuesday at their regular polling place, officials announced Sunday. Power has been restored to Demarest Elementary, Brookdale Elementary and Bloomfield Middle, Carteret Elementary schools, and residents assigned to polling places there will be able to vote at those locations, according to Bloomfield Clerk Louise Palagano. All other regular polling places will also be open Tuesday. New Jersey residents displaced by Hurricane Sandy and staying in a different part of the state can go to a nearby polling place Tuesday to vote via provisional ballot. Essex County residents can cast an early vote via vote-by-mail ballot at the county Clerk's Office (Room 247, Essex County Hall of Records, 465 Martin …

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Clarks Pond a Classroom at Bloomfield Middle School

Passaic Valley Sewerage Commission brings environmental education program to Bloomfield

Bloomfield Middle School is thinking outside of the box – and classroom – when it comes to environmental studies. Since the beginning of the school year, Clarks Pond, located behind the Huck Road school, has been the centerpiece for science lessons, thanks to Passaic Valley Sewerage Commission's living classroom program. "We're taking what students learn in class and applying it to a direct science lesson," said 7th and 8th grade West Wing teacher Wendy Cerniglia. On Thursday, Cerniglia's class roamed the grassy, picturesque bank of Clarks Pond and played an "I Spy" game, where students had to describe an animal, plant or something from the water for others to guess. "We're just helping out the environment," said 8th grader Armani Johnson…

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Bloomfield Middle School Announces National Junior Honor Society Inductees

Dozens welcomed into honor society last Thursday

Bloomfield Middle School inductees of the National Junior Honor Society were announced last Thursday. Members must demonstrate academic excellence, as well as uphold traits of scholarship, service, leadership, character and citizenship, last year's co-president Dessa Red and vice president Lily Andres told the new inductees. The new members are as follows: [Editor's note: This list has been updated to include all names.]

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Week Ahead: The Birds, Blood Pressure Screening, Back to School Night

Check out what's happening in Bloomfield this week

Check out some of the events going on this week. On Monday,  the town council will have a council meeting at 7 p.m. The meeting will be in the second floor council chambers in the municipal building. The Bloomfield Public Library will have a free film at 12:15 p.m. on Monday. This week the featured movie is "The Birds." A wealthy socialite (Tippi Hedren) drives to a coastal town in California to visit handsome Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor). Their romantic weekend is shattered when birds begin a series of vicious attacks on the townspeople. Director Alfred Hitchcock based this chiller on a story by Daphne du Maurier. The movies are held in the library theater. The Municipal Clerk Louise M. Palagano has announced that residents interested in …

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Council Disagrees Over Lionsgate-Scientific Glass Project

Mayor, Joanow spar on whether proposed development project will become a flood zone

  At Monday's township council meeting, Councilman Nick Joanow strongly urged the council to put the brakes on a development project previously approved by the Planning Board, saying it would aggravate an already problematic situation in the township. If given the go-ahead, the so-called Lion Gate-Scientific Glass project will construct 104 for-sale condominium units on an existing floodplain at 8 Lionsgate Drive (off Broad Street near Bay Avenue, at the old Scientific Glass site).  Once constructed, the building would be at serious risk of flooding, Joanow said, having been erected on wetlands. Besides, he added, new families moving into the residential units would add 60 to 70 additional children to Bloomfield’s public schools, which are…

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Bloomfield Student is North Jersey Spelling Bee Runner-Up

Riyad Moughawech and Mary Campos-Poreira were among 32 finalists who competed in the bee and also appeared on a "Cake Boss" episode.

  At the end, all Riyad Moughawech could do was laugh it off. He had spelled his way to a second-place finish Thursday in the North Jersey Spelling Bee at Bergen Community College in Paramus. But the Bloomfield Middle School student was stumped by the word "wejack," an Algonquin word meaning woodchuck. "That's a ridiculous word," Moughawech said, cracking up, and causing the audience in the Anna Maria Ciccone Theater to laugh, too. He gave it a shot anyway, but added an extra "e." Still, his finish was good enough to win an iPod, a $20 Amazon gift card and a subscription to Encyclopedia Britannica.  Moughawech and another student from Bloomfield, Mary Campos-Poreira, were among the 32 finalists at the Spelling Bee.  Campos-Poreira of …

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Two Victories for Bloomfield Middle School at Law Competition

BMS won big at the New Jersey State Bar Foundation's Law Adventure Competition

  Bloomfield Middle School has been honored with two wins in the New Jersey State Bar Foundation's Law Adventure Competition. Lauren Barton and Jose Sarmiento's Gifted & Talented Enrichment Magnet students have won second place in the seventh grade for their case "Symbol of Peace or Symbol of Death", the story of a young Indian girl who is denied permission to wear a traditional Indian symbol of peace which closely resembles the swastika.  They will perform their case at the Law Center in New Brunswick on 5/16/12. John Shanagher's sixth period class has won first place in the eighth grade for their case, "The Devil Made Her Do It?",  which involves a teacher named Lucy Fer who is denied tenure because of controversy caused by her tattoo of…

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VIDEO: Teen Dating Abuse Presentation at BOE Meeting

Video of the March 13, 2012 BOE meeting at Bloomfield Middle School provided courtesy of WBMA TV