Bellmore-Merrick residents may notice something new while driving past John F. Kennedy High School: a “jumbo-tron” digital welcome sign, which was funded by alumni and a grant secured by State Sen. Charles Fuschillo Jr. more

North Bellmore School District officials are asking voters to return to the polls in less than two weeks for a runoff election to break an unprecedented tie for a Board of Education seat. more

Two signs designating Levy-Lakeside School’s front baseball field as Forever 9 Field, which the Merrick-North Merrick Little League hung in April without permission from the Merrick School District, will remain up for the rest of the year, the Merrick Board of Education decided on June 4. The board also ruled that the Little League can apply in 2014 for permission to keep the signs up. more

The Jets’ old, dark-green scoreboard still stands in a dirt field at the team’s former training camp on Hofstra University’s north campus. “The will to win is nothing without the will to prepare,” it reads. Call it a monument to the past, which will soon be removed to make way for the future –– a 63,000-square-foot addition to the Hofstra North Shore-LIJ Medical School, which was founded in 2008 and welcomed its first class of 40 in 2011. The $39.5 million project, funded in part with a $14.5 million state grant, will more than double the size of the medical school. more

The Bellmore-Merrick Central High School District recently named its valedictorians and salutatorians for the class of 2013. They are: from Calhoun High School, William Mansmann, valedictorian, and Julianne Ciccone, salutatorian; Kennedy, Eric Fegan, valedictorian, and Jordan Liebman, salutatorian; Mepham, Connor Garet, valedictorian, and Brandon Needelman, salutatorian. more

The Barbie doll, long lambasted as a caricature of the modern woman — impossibly thin, vacuous, at times scantily dressed — may be good for girls’ diets. That was the surprising finding of a science research project conducted over the past year by Rebecca Jellinek, 16, a junior at Kennedy High School in Bellmore. Jellinek questioned 104 local girls, ages 6 to 8, about their food preferences after they played with one of two dolls — Barbie or Tracy Turnblad, the “full-figured” leading character in the movie musical “Hairspray.” more

Students and teachers involved with Mepham High School’s service organizations walked as a group on May 22, when the clubs hosted a walk-a-thon to aid Boston Marathon bombing victims. more

The New York State Council for the Social Studies annually names one New York elementary school teacher as the state’s “Outstanding Social Studies Teacher of the Year.” This year the council awarded the honor to Merrick native and Calhoun High School graduate Janine Sena-Saputo. more

North Merrick School District Superintendent David Feller will become president of the Nassau County Council of School Superintendents on June 1. With the position, he will also assume a spot on the Commissioner’s Advisory Council of the New York State Council of School Superintendents, which meets three to four times a year with the New York State Education Department commissioner, currently Dr. John King Jr. more

There is a common thread that runs through the science research projects of Calhoun High School seniors Brigid Maloney and Christian Tucci, both of whom recently made the finals of the prestigious Long Island Science and Engineering Fair –– water. more