Jaime Curley, the new superintendent of public schools on Martha’s Vineyard, originally wanted to work with kids as a therapist after a shattering loss darkened her own childhood.
“My father got sick with a liver disease, and he passed away when I was 11 years old,” Ms. Curley told the Gazette this week, at her district office near the Tisbury School. “So when I was growing up, I wanted to be a psychologist and help children go through traumatic incidents like I had gone through.”
But after earning her bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Ms. Curley discovered the joy of teaching during a job with the May Center School for Autism and Developmental Disabilities, which had a campus in Chatham.
“I [realized], oh, I kind of like working with kids, so I went back to Bridgewater State [University] and got my teaching certificate to be a special education teacher,” she said.
Ms. Curley, 50, has worked in public schools from then on, starting on the very bottom rung as a paraprofessional.
“Then I became a special ed teacher, and then a school psychologist,” she said.
She also earned a master’s in education from UMass, Boston and a doctorate in education from Nova Southeastern University.
In 2017, Ms. Curley was named director of special education for the Mashpee school district and in 2024 became assistant superintendent of student services for the Old Rochester district in the Mattapoisett area.
She started her Island job July 1, following the retirement of Richard M. Smith, and has been spending her first months getting to know the Vineyard’s public school system, its six schools and their corresponding elected school committees.
As superintendent, Ms. Curley is responsible for managing the school principals and providing a range of centralized services to the schools, including special education, English language learning, string music programs and individual clinical therapies.
Her office, a former church on Pine street, also oversees transportation, human resources and facilities, including food services. Those areas are handled by assistant superintendent for operations Ashley Lopes, the district’s first hire under Ms. Curley, who worked with Ms. Lopes in the Mashpee district. (Ms. Lopes is not related to Wampanoag educator Brad Lopes or other tribal members, Ms. Curley said.)
Sara Dingledy, who was principal of Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School for nine years, also works at the central office, where she was hired by Mr. Smith to coordinate the town schools’ curriculum.
“We’re trying to create as much consistency across the elementary schools as possible,” Ms. Curley said.
A shared curriculum will make it more likely that all children are equally prepared to enter the regional high school, but it does not mean the loss of individuality for the town schools, Ms. Curley said.
“They are all very unique. We do not want to take that away from them,” she said.
Business manager Mark Friedman also works from the central office, along with a grant writer and the heads of the shared service programs.
On Sept. 24, Ms. Curley was scheduled to present her goals for the coming year to the all-Island school committee.
“A lot of it is listening and learning,” she said, noting that she’s already begun meeting with town administrators and police chiefs.
“I want to talk to parents. I want to talk to students. One of the things — and I stole this from another superintendent off Island — I want to meet with all of the seniors this year, individually, to get a sense from them about what their experience was going through the Martha’s Vineyard public school system,” Ms. Curley said.
One of her chief commitments, Ms. Curley told the Gazette, is to visit every school in the system at least twice a month. She’s already scheduled out her visits for the whole school year and told her administrative assistant, Kristen Lepine, to consider them sacrosanct, she said.
“Those are sacred, sacred times for me, to be in the buildings with the kids and the teachers and the paraprofessionals and the staff and principals,” Ms. Curley said.
She may be the Island’s top education official, but she can’t lose sight of what it’s like to be in the classroom, she said.
“Whenever I think about someone struggling with a student who might be having some challenging behavioral issues or whatever, I remember what it was like being a paraprofessional in a room, you know, helping with that,” Ms. Curley said.
“I made a promise to myself that no matter where I ended up... I would never forget what those days were like,” she said.
Ms. Curley would also like to see the all-Island school committee adopt a strategic plan for the superintendency district, which encompasses four school districts for the five town schools and a fifth district for the regional high school.
“I’m used to having the district strategic plan be the overarching plan for everybody to follow, and then the school improvement plans are below that, so that we’re all kind of moving in the same direction together,” she said.
A lifelong Cape Cod resident, Ms. Curley lives in Sandwich with her husband, the youngest of their three daughters and a black Lab named Oliver. The oldest two daughters are in college.
She’s well acquainted with the Vineyard through her husband’s relatives, and one of them has provided her with a seasonally vacant home in Oak Bluffs, she said. As a result, she has been able to split her time between the Cape and the Island while her daughter, a senior at Sandwich High School, winds up her final season on the varsity soccer team.
“I sometimes go home for games and then come back the next day,” she said.
“Come November, I’ll be here every [week]night, unless I have to go home for something,” Ms. Curley said.
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