Ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new Northern Burlington County Regional Middle School will be held on Aug. 16.
By: William Wichert
MANSFIELD The new $26.3 million Northern Burlington County Regional Middle School will open its doors to the public for the first time during the week of Aug. 16.
There will be a ribbon-cutting ceremony at 5:30 p.m. on Aug. 16 at the school, which is located in the rear of the district’s complex on Mansfield Road East. Parents and students will be able to tour the school during an open house on Aug. 18 and 19.
Students and teachers were scheduled to move into the building in March, but the opening was postponed to give the contractors more time to finish the work and to save about $300,000 that would have been spent on salaries, energy and moving costs. These funds were used to reduce the school tax rate in this year’s budget.
When the school opens on Sept. 9 it will be filled with about 750 students, said Superintendent James Sarruda. The building has a capacity to fit 800 people, but the construction of an additional hallway could increase the capacity to about 1,200, he said.
The new middle school will be occupied by seventh- and eighth-graders from Mansfield, Chesterfield, North Hanover and Springfield Ttownships. The original middle school will be used as additional classroom space for the high school.
During an informal tour of the facility on Monday night, Dr. Sarruda and members of the Board of Education walked past stacks of textbooks ready to be distributed and some minor construction projects, while pointing out some of the highlights of the building.
Unlike the high school, the entire two-story building is equipped with an air-conditioning system and elevators, which make the facility more handicapped-accessible, Dr. Sarruda said.
While the other school buildings have a separate cafeteria and auditorium, the new middle school has a "cafetorium," a three-tier combination of the two. Students will have lunch and attend school assemblies in the same room.
Another type of combination can be found within four large classrooms, each of which can be divided into two separate classrooms. Since the seventh- and eighth-graders are already divided into teams, the adjoining classrooms will enable the different teams to work on shared projects.
The building also features a teacher planning room, where the teachers from each team can plan their lessons together.
"They teach in teams. They can plan in teams," said Dr. Sarruda, who said the combined classrooms are indicative of the input the teachers offered in the initial planning phase.
"The faculty and administration were so much a part of the planning, they’re going to take ownership," he said.

