After six years of striving for a state partnership to rebuild the Island’s aging regional high school, superintendent Dr. Matthew D’Andrea and high school leaders have finally gained admission to the competitive Massachusetts School Building Authority grant program.

Recommended last month by the authority’s admissions committee, the Vineyard school district got official word this week that the high school will be included in the grant program — as long as the Island’s six towns can agree to fund the more than 60 per cent of construction costs that will not be covered by the state building authority.

The grant program comes with a timeline that begins Sept. 1, when the high school committee is expected to begin crafting a warrant article for all towns to collaborate in funding a feasibility study to determine the scope and estimated cost to rebuild or substantially renovate the high school, which was built in 1959 and was last renovated in the 1990s.

— Louisa Hufstader