To a huge round of applause, Superintendent Dr. Frank Alvarez announced Monday night that Nami Kuwabara has been named the new principal at the Charles H. Bullock Elementary School.

Kuwabara, a second grade teacher at Bullock, was named Montclair's Teacher of the Year in May 2011. She's been teaching for 14 years, 10 in the Montclair Public Schools district.

Alvarez said the district received 108 applications for the post, which became available when Dr. Barbara Weller—the former Bullock principal—was named assistant schools superintendent last year.

"She's had a stellar career in this district," Alvarez said at Monday night's school board meeting. "And she's highly respected by the staff.

"She's the right person to continue where Dr. Weller left off," he said.

A graduate of CUNY Baruch College with a BA in Psychology and a minor in Education (Kuwabara also has an MS in Elementary Education from Fordham University and an MA Educational Administration from Caldwell College), she began her teaching career at St. Gregory the Great School.

“I started in fourth grade,” she recalled. “But in my head, I felt that by fourth grade, the expectation was that the children should know how to read and write but they weren’t meeting the standards. I didn’t want to be filling in potholes. I wanted to be the one laying the foundation.”

More on this story on Tuesday's Montclair Patch.