Contract negotiations between the All-Island School Committee and school secretaries have stalled and will go to mediation at the end of the month, Vineyard Schools superintendent Dr. James H. Weiss announced this week.

“It’s taking far too long,” Mr. Weiss told Island newspapers on Monday afternoon. “This is my second negotiation with these groups, and we’ve never even come close to mediation with any other group. This is a unique circumstance.”

Talks have been under way between the two sides for seven months.

The Aquinnah selectmen this week granted a town oyster farmer a reprieve and a conditional lease to continue her work in Menemsha Pond. Roxanne Ackerman’s five-year lease was revoked by the selectmen in June due to bags and debris washing ashore on private and public beaches, but at their meeting Tuesday the board took a slightly softer approach.

After some time spent discussing process and failed communication on all sides, selectmen agreed to give Ms. Ackerman, a longtime oyster farmer, a second chance.

All except board chairman Camille Rose.

The harsh autumn weather has had a big impact on participants in the 65th annual Martha’s Vineyard Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby, leading president Ed Jerome to cast a most tempting lure for fishermen in the final week of the contest. “All of the fish on the board are beatable,” he said.

Sandy E. Fisher’s 15.88-pound bluefish may be a hard fish to beat, but Michael A. Paone’s 37.6-pound striped bass could be moved down a prize.

The Edgartown conservation commission, Nature Conservancy and Division of Conservation Services are in discussion about a possible land swap at Pennywise Path as a way to allow the Katama Airfield hangar restoration project to go forward, town selectmen learned this week.

LONDON — Vineyard vocalist Katie Mayhew made her international debut at London’s Cadogan Hall, singing her signature Sondheim song Being Alive, which won her the 2008 Boston Pops high school sing-off and the notice of the British director who staged Wednesday night’s Inspiration Awards for Women ceremony.

With the future for aquaculture looking bright following a successful experiment in farming blue mussels this year, the Chilmark selectmen voted this week to award two Menemsha shellfishermen five acres of North Shore water to continue their work growing mussels.

Tim Broderick and Alec Gale harvested 1,900 pounds of blue mussels this summer in the experimental farm. Now they plan to set up ten 500-foot lines in Chilmark waters, where they hope to grow 10,000 pounds.

Winter flounder, once abundant in Vineyard waters, is on the verge of collapse. And now a group of Islanders, with help from the University of New Hampshire, have received a federal grant to try and raise the fish at a local hatchery and release them into Lagoon and Menemsha Ponds.

A Vineyard Haven man and former Edgartown supermarket manager was sentenced in Dukes County Superior Court on Wednesday to 10 years in jail for the rape of another former store employee early this year.

Peter Duart, 42, also was convicted of indecent assault and battery of the ailing, 69-year-old victim, who is a resident of Oak Bluffs, and sentenced to three years of probation to begin at the conclusion of his jail time.

It says something about the political mood of the moment that during a half-hour interview with the Gazette over coffee last Saturday afternoon, William Keating, candidate for the 10th Congressional district, did not mention once the name of his party.

But while the word Democrat never passed his lips, the word independent popped out frequently.

Island health boards are urging a newly aggressive approach to combating Lyme disease, proposing a five-year comprehensive study that would examine, among other things, drastically reducing the Island’s deer population.

The Vineyard study would piggyback off a recent report from the Nantucket Tick-Borne Disease Committee, which argues for culling its herd of approximately 2,500 deer to 500 or fewer animals, a process the state Division of Fisheries and Wildlife expects to take roughly a decade.