Lawrence Middle School is a junior high school for students in grades 7 and 8 in Lawrence Township

Lawrence Township, Mercer County, New Jersey

Area residents often refer to all of Lawrence Township as Lawrenceville. Lawrenceville is a census-designated place and unincorporated area located within Lawrence Township...

, Mercer County

Mercer County, New Jersey

As of the census of 2000, there were 350,761 people, 125,807 households, and 86,303 families residing in the county. The population density was 1,552 people per square mile . There were 133,280 housing units at an average density of 590 per square mile...

, New Jersey

New Jersey

New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...

, USA. It is located adjacent to Lawrence High School

Lawrence High School (New Jersey)

Lawrence High School is a four-year comprehensive public high school in the Lawrenceville section of Lawrence Township, in Mercer County, New Jersey, United States, serving grades 9-12 as part of the Lawrence Township Public Schools. LHS was built in 1967...

. The school is the only junior high school in the Lawrence Township Public Schools

Lawrence Township Public Schools

The Lawrence Township Public Schools are comprehensive community public school district that serves students in kindergarten through twelfth grade from Lawrence Township, in Mercer County, New Jersey, United States....

.

Awards and recognition

For the 1999-2000 school year, Lawrence Middle School was named a "Star School" by the New Jersey Department of Education

New Jersey Department of Education

The New Jersey Department of Education administers state and federal aid programs affecting more than 1.4 million public and non-public elementary and secondary school children in the state of New Jersey. The department is headquartered in Trenton.The Department is responsible for ensuring that...

, the second highest honor that a New Jersey school can achieve.

Athletics

Lawrence Middle School's mascot is the cardinal.

In both the 2005-2006 and 2009-2010 seasons, the LMS wresting team took first place in the Mercer County Middle School Wrestling Tournament.

Controversy

Lawrence Middle School was in the media in the midst of a scandal about bathroom pass policies in 2004. The school was mentioned on major news networks, and was used in a joke on the hit NBC

NBC

The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...

 late night show, Saturday Night Live

Saturday Night Live

Saturday Night Live is a live American late-night television sketch comedy and variety show developed by Lorne Michaels and Dick Ebersol. The show premiered on NBC on October 11, 1975, under the original title of NBC's Saturday Night.The show's sketches often parody contemporary American culture...

, in which Tina Fey said: "A controversial new discipline policy at Lawrence Middle School in New Jersey is limiting students to just 15 bathroom breaks a month."

The bathroom pass scandal was the result of administration trying to make the school safer. Taking the bathroom pass policies from the Lawrence High School

Lawrence High School (New Jersey)

Lawrence High School is a four-year comprehensive public high school in the Lawrenceville section of Lawrence Township, in Mercer County, New Jersey, United States, serving grades 9-12 as part of the Lawrence Township Public Schools. LHS was built in 1967...

, which allowed students only 15 trips to the bathroom, administration felt they would be able to limit the amount of bomb threat

Bomb threat

A bomb threat is generally defined as a threat, usually verbal or written, to detonate an explosive or incendiary device to cause property damage, death, or injuries, whether or not such a device actually exists...

pranks the school had. The Lawrence Middle School is known for its unusually high amount of bomb threats, a problem which has not transferred to the Lawrence High School.