Amy Houghton, chairman of the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School committee for the past year, resigned her post as a committee member representing Tisbury at a meeting early this week.
Ms. Houghton presided over her last high school committee meeting Monday, during which Robert Lionette of Chilmark was voted chairman for the next year with Kimberly Kirk of Edgartown as vice-chairman. Mr. Lionette also will take Ms. Houghton’s place on the all-Island school committee.
“The committee is going in a direction that I can’t be the champion of, and it’s in the best interest of the school to have some fresh perspective,” Ms. Houghton told the Gazette by phone Tuesday morning.
Ms. Houghton’s tenure as chairman has included the high school’s initial acceptance, after years of unsuccessful applications, into the competitive Massachusetts School Building Authority construction program.
She was in the minority this spring when the committee voted to take legal action against the Oak Bluffs planning board over the denial of a special permit for an artificial turf field at the high school.
A court complaint against the planning board was filed in early June.
Ms. Houghton will remain on the Tisbury school committee, she told the Gazette.
Tisbury committee member Jennifer Cutrer will take Ms. Houghton’s place on the high school committee, representing the town alongside Michael Watts.
In other school business Monday, district committee members agreed to schedule a joint meeting with the six town select boards to review and ratify a cost-sharing formula for the capital costs of building a new high school, a key step toward advancing in the MSBA construction program.
While Ms. Houghton will no longer be involved in the building project at the high school, the Tisbury School is also preparing for a major two-year renovation and addition project funded through a $55 million borrowing measure approved by town voters last year.
Contractors are working now to install utilities for a modular temporary school on the southeast side of the campus, where Tisbury students and teachers will report for classes this fall.
Work to abate hazardous materials and demolish the school gymnasium is slated to begin after summer school ends August 4.
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