Schools
When Charles McGrath wrote about the annual Island Cup game between the Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket football teams for the New Yorker in 1984, he likened it to a fierce sibling rivalry. What mainland team could hope to drum up a rivalry as poignant with either of the Island squads? For all that the Vineyarders can’t stand about the Whalers, they also know that the only football team in the entire country that could possibly understand what it means to be an Islander is that of their brother-in-isolation, Nantucket.
The Edgartown School will begin a pilot enrichment program next year aimed at students working at advanced levels in math — a program that, if successful, could be adopted by other Island schools.
The local school committee voted last week in favor of a one-year trial of a fifth through eighth grade enrichment program in response to requests from parents about meeting the needs of high-ability math students.
On Saturday, at the bow of the historic schooner Alabama, Capt. Ian Ridgeway addressed a group of Martha’s Vineyard Public Charter School fifth and sixth grade students who had just returned from a five-day sail at sea.
“This is a bond that the 20 or so of us will all have together for the rest of our lives,” he said. “You are now ambassadors for this boat.”
The 2011-12 sports season started as those before it have, with a week of pre-dawn preseason workouts in August for the fall teams.
The class is optional. And yet 162 students signed up to take driver’s education at the high school this year, seizing the opportunity to learn the basics of driving at school, at no cost.
This is exactly what Tom and Barbara Furino hoped for.
The high school driver’s education program is part of their quest for teenagers to have the chance to take driver’s education in school. Their passion is rooted in a personal tragedy: in May 2004, their son David, 17, and his friend Kevin Johnson, 16, were killed in a car crash in Katama.
SHREWSBURY — Capping a dream season, the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School boys’ tennis team won the Division 3 state championship Thursday for the first time in history. The boys defeated Nashoba 4-1 on outdoor courts at the St. John’s High School tennis complex, finishing their season with a perfect 23-0 record.