The Bellmore-Merrick Central High School District took time out of its regular meeting on Wednesday to honor five outstanding students, as well as champion wrestlers, runners and an air rifle markswoman. more

The Bellmore-Merrick Central High School District is looking at a 3.58 percent increase in its 2010-11 operating budget when compared to the current year, meaning expenditures would jump from roughly $122 million to $127.3 million. more

Across Bellmore and North Bellmore, school staff members, students and their families are joining forces to help the victims of the earthquake in Haiti. more

Bellmore-Merrick Central High School District officials are weighing whether to eliminate summer school in 2010 owing to $2.2million in potential cuts to the district’s state aid package. The cuts, if approved by the state Legislature, would reduce Bellmore-Merrick’s total aid by nearly 12 percent. more

All five local school districts –– including the Bellmore-Merrick Central, and Bellmore, Merrick, North Bellmore and North Merrick elementary districts –– had part of their state allotments for December held back after Gov. David Paterson ordered the payments halted so the state could stay solvent. more

The Bellmore-Merrick Central High School District Special Education PTA and the Community Parent Center will present the third annual Fair for Transitioning Students with Disabilities on Tuesday, Jan. 19, from 7 to 9:30p.m. in the Calhoun High School cafeteria. For more information, call Cheryl Gitlitz at (516) 992-1349. To register, e-mail MartineTyson at mmtys@optonline.net. The event will feature a panel presentation for parents and students about life after high school. more

Tzvi Lewisohn, a Calhoun High School senior, loves to win. Basketball, bowling, you name it, Lewisohn is a competitor. But, he is quick to note, more important than winning is sportsmanship. “We always congratulate the other teams,” Lewisohn, a member of Calhoun's Challenger bowling and basketball teams, says with a smile. “We don't want them to think we're out to win; we're just trying to have fun.” Of course, it doesn't hurt that both teams are undefeated for the past two years. They have not lost since the Bellmore-Merrick Central High School District started the Challenger basketball league for special-education students with a handful of other Nassau County school districts in 2008. more

Craig Papach, Kennedy High School's athletic coordinator and a 19-year phys. ed. teacher, had long heard the stories of poverty and loneliness, and he wanted to help. So, on Thanksgiving morning, he and his family piled into their car and made the trek from their suburban home in a quiet Wantagh neighborhood to a tiny church on Beach 94th Street in Queens. They went to lend their hands and, equally important, their ears to a day-long effort to aid the homeless. Papach was one of 10 Bellmore-Merrick Central High School District teachers who joined roughly 100 volunteers from Rock and Wrap It Up, a Five Towns-based nonprofit group founded by Syd Mandelbaum, to feed hundreds of impoverished street denizens, some of whom had not eaten for days. more

Saul Lerner, the Bellmore-Merrick Central High School District athletic director, recently resigned his post as coordinator of the Nassau County Boys' Basketball Committee because, he said, the Section VIII Athletic Council rejected a proposal of his to fine-tune the seeding process that ultimately determines teams' playing schedules. In 2006, Lerner was the architect of an ability-grouping system that determined a team's conference by its record. Previously, teams were assigned to conferences without much regard to their records. Rather, officials used what they called the "snake," in which teams were seeded and then laid out on a grid that wound back and forth in serpentine fashion. more

Calhoun, Kennedy and Mepham high schools all celebrated Homecoming on Saturday, and students had a blast at the pre-game parades and at the big football games, despite all three home teams losing. Calhoun went down to Massapequa, 24-20. Kennedy lost a heartbreaker to Division, 21-20, after being up 20-0 at halftime. And Mepham was overpowered by No. 4 seed Wantagh, 30-7. more