Schools
Island Grown Schools coordinator Kaila Binney is especially excited about January.
“I have this crazy idea,” she said. “I want to get conch in the schools. It’s the biggest export on the Vineyard and nobody eats it.”
Ms. Binney, along with IGS director Noli Taylor, is launching a new program called Harvest of the Month designed to introduce Vineyard students to a new locally-grown crop each month.
Next Thursday morning, familiar yellow school buses will roll across Island roads carrying students from kindergarten through 12th grade to their first day of school.
Total school enrollment is expected to be just over 2,000 in five public elementary schools and the regional high school, according to Vineyard schools superintendent Dr. James H. Weiss.
Schools will be sprinkled with new teachers as well as new programs, from changes in the kitchen at the West Tisbury School to changes in the classrooms at the Edgartown School.
With the start of the new school year a little more than a week away, the Up-Island Regional School District committee on Monday heard a report on the nearly-completed West Tisbury School kitchen and discussed an array of fiscal issues.
West Tisbury School principal Michael Halt said the kitchen project represents the end of a long road.
Grace Episcopal Church has named Penelope Wong of Vineyard Haven as the interim director of Grace Preschool, effective Sept. 1. The staff change was necessitated by the resignation of Deborah Jernegan as the Grace Preschool director.
Ms. Wong is well-known on Martha’s Vineyard for her work with Martha’s Vineyard Hospital and Learning Center, the YMCA of Martha’s Vineyard and, most recently, the Tisbury School, where she worked as a kindergarten assistant, teacher, ELL assistant and coordinator.
Preseason practice awaits high school athletes regardless of what sport they play, but only the fall warrants its own moniker: Hell Week, which began this year on August 23. After the relatively lazy days of summer comes a fast-paced week of tryouts and tune-ups. Dawn workouts are considered the standard of Hell Week (some groups prefer the early practices because they allow players to continue their summer jobs a little longer), but on any given day in the week leading up to school you’ll find at least two teams on the fields in both the morning and the late afternoon.
West Tisbury fourth grade teacher Mary Boyd has been selected to take the post of interim assistant principal at the West Tisbury School this fall.
In announcing the appointment this week, Vineyard schools superintendent Dr. James H. Weiss singled out Ms. Boyd for her skills as a responsive classroom trainer, a member of the curriculum, instruction and assessment leadership team and a lifelong Chilmark resident. She will work with West Tisbury principal Michael Halt.