Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School was empty of students this last week of August, with just a handful of cars parked outside the main building as teachers and administrators prepared for classes to begin Tuesday morning.

“We’ve got a dedicated staff — people have been coming in over the last couple of weeks,” said incoming principal Sean Mulvey, who was still settling into his office after having been promoted from the counseling department earlier this summer.

The school’s first new principal in nine years, Mr. Mulvey already is a well-known member of the MVRHS community. He’s worked in the guidance department there since 2019, alongside his wife, fellow counselor Erika Mulvey.

Before coming to the high school, Mr. Mulvey spent eight years as assistant principal at the Tisbury School following a one-year contract as assistant principal at West Tisbury School, the job that first brought the family to the Vineyard from Colorado in 2010.

Mr. Mulvey isn't planning to make any big waves during his first year.

Jeanna Shepard

Mr. Mulvey isn't planning to make any big waves during his first year.

Jeanna Shepard

“[Principal] Donna DeBettencourt kind of sold us on it, because West Tisbury School is a great place for a kid to go to school,” Mr. Mulvey told the Gazette.

The couple’s son Ben entered first grade in West Tisbury and graduated from Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School in 2022, followed by their daughter Avery in 2025.

With both children now in college, Mr. Mulvey said he felt capable of stepping into the job held for nine years by principal Sara Dingledy, who has moved to a central curriculum position reporting to Island schools superintendent Richard Smith.

After a brief search for a new principal earlier this year, Mr. Smith told the all-Island and high school committees he felt Mr. Mulvey would be an excellent successor to Ms. Dingledy.

“I’m not going to write on his contract, ‘interim principal,’” Mr. Smith said at the time. “He’s the principal. I want the community to see him as such, and certainly I do, and I know you all do.”

Mr. Mulvey signed a one-year contract in July, leaving open the possibility of a new principal search in 2026.

“The reason I’m in this position, that I put my hat in the ring, was initially so we could buy time to help with the search,” he told the school committee in July. “There is a chance that I might grow into this role and I might enjoy it.”

It was counseling — not ambition — that led him to leave the Tisbury School for Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School in 2019, he told the Gazette this week.

“I left the perfect position, working with [Tisbury principal] John Custer, working with an amazing staff... but I knew my heart allied with guidance counseling and working with students that way, especially at the high school setting,” Mr. Mulvey said.

“I love being a guidance counselor,” he said, with emphasis. “I had to give up a lot to do what I do now.”

For example, being principal automatically obliges Mr. Mulvey to join the high school building committee, which is preparing to seek hundreds of millions of dollars in town funding to renovate and expand the school’s aging infrastructure.

He is also required to attend the monthly meetings of the elected high school committee, among other responsibilities that lie outside of his true vocation.

Originally from the Seattle, Wash. area, Mr. Mulvey attended the University of Colorado, where he met his future wife while they both were studying to become guidance counselors.

He then headed the guidance department at a private Christian school in Colorado, where he also served as academic dean, gaining the qualifications needed to take the West Tisbury job 15 years ago.

Ms. Mulvey also found work in Island schools and settled at MVRHS a year before her husband. The couple live in Tisbury, where they were able to buy a home after years of living in various Island rentals.

High school students and teachers won’t see big changes under Mr. Mulvey’s administration, he said, citing Ms. Dingledy’s leadership of nearly a decade.

“[I give] a lot of credit to Sara, and we have a whole school full of teacher leaders who helped,” Mr. Mulvey said. 

“The school is in a wonderful place right now, so I feel it’s kind of my duty to maintain that,” he added.

Along with the school building project, which is expected to go before voters next spring, Mr. Mulvey said the coming year will see the continuation of two major initiatives Ms. Dingledy introduced last year: the exclusive use of school-provided Chromebook computers for student work and the Away for the Day phone policy, which prohibits the use of student cell phones during the school day.

Teachers and counselors met over the summer to discuss potential updates to the phone policy, he said.

“We’ve got a couple of tweaks, a couple of maybe improvements that we’ll do this year,” Mr. Mulvey said.

“And now it’s part of the culture, so I think we can put a little more responsibility and a little more trust in the students,” he added.

While Ms. Dingledy now works at the central schools office, Mr. Mulvey said she has remained available to help him adjust to his new job.

“She is so supportive [and] she’s made herself a really great resource for everyone,” he said.

More than 700 high school students have enrolled for the fall semester, he said, and that number is likely to rise — as it has in past years — with new students arriving after school begins. 

Mr. Mulvey is looking forward to welcoming them all, while continuing to build on Ms. Dingledy’s legacy.

“To make a smooth transition to the school year and keep things running the way they have been: That will feel like success,” he said.