At Charter School, an Affirmation of Doing Right

By C.K. WOLFSON

It was as if the buoyant mood and fellowship at the Martha's
Vineyard Public Charter School's graduation created a force field
that staved off Saturday morning's threatened rain. More than 150
smiling, mingling people gradually made their way across the grass
behind the volleyball court, and handshake by handshake, hug by hug,
ambled into the large white tent.

A federal civil rights investigation of the Oak Bluffs and Tisbury
schools has cited both for failing to meet the instructional needs of
their growing population of Brazilian students.

The investigation was triggered by a parent complaint in November
which alleged that the schools' lack of trained teachers,
interpreters and appropriate materials was shortchanging Brazilian
students.

Barbara Dacey knows what keeps a song on the radio. For the past 18
years, she's worked at WMVY, sifting through popular music and
engineering a special blend of tunes for the eclectic Island radio
station.

The station is throwing itself a 20th birthday party at the Hot Tin
Roof on Thursday, June 12, with singer/songwriters Dar Williams and
Patty Larkin. The event is aimed at dedicated listeners, as tickets are
not for sale, but are being given away over the air.

They stepped outside the classroom walls. They coached youth basketball and soccer teams. The wrote poetry and read it aloud at a downtown coffeehouse. They watched what was going on in the world around them, and they spoke out.

For the Martha's Vineyard Regional High School Class of 2003, there was little time for gripes about having nothing to do on the Island.

Charter School Graduates Five Students

By MANDY LOCKE

The five sit around the schoolyard picnic table as naturally as a
family at the dinner table. Such an easy rhythm pulses through their
exchanges that the new addition to their group thinks this handful of
Island teenagers is, in fact, family.

And that, they agree, is exactly the point. It's all part of
the Martha's Vineyard Public Charter School experiment.

Tisbury's ‘Climate Has Been Tainted'

So Saying, Selectman LaPorte Decides it's Time for Town
Administrator to Take Work Elsewhere

By JONATHAN BURKE

Selectman Ray LaPorte broke a stalemate on the Tisbury town board
this week by withdrawing his support for the reappointment of town
administrator Dennis Luttrell.

Plan for Auction in Oak Bluffs Stirs Tempest: Is It Park Land?

By CHRIS BURRELL

When selectmen in Oak Bluffs first heard about the surplus land
their financial team had seized for nonpayment of taxes, they saw dollar
signs and quickly planned an auction as a sure-fire way to bolster town
coffers with extra cash.

While Schools Here Rank High in Per-Pupil Dollars, Enrollments Head
Down

By JULIA WELLS
Gazette Senior Writer

School spending on the Vineyard is steadily rising on a flood tide
of property tax money and now ranks in the top third for the state,
while enrollment is steadily falling and expected to ebb even more in
the next five years.

This is the latest profile of public education on the Vineyard,
sketched through an array of statistics from the state department of
education and the local schools.

Bad Weather Brings Mixed Prognosis for Tick-Borne Illnesses

By CHRIS BURRELL

When you're talking ticks and the many illnesses they can
spread, bad weather can be a double-edged sword.

Donna Enos, the infection control nurse at the Martha's
Vineyard Hospital, will tell you that the combination of rain and cool
temperatures have kept many people indoors, significantly reducing their
risk of a tick bite.

On 28 Island Farms, It's Time for Annual Ritual of Shearing

By C.K. WOLFSON

With their limbs fit snugly against each other, the shearer and the
175-pound Corriedale sheep he holds form a shifting, flesh-and-bone
puzzle. It is a single, interlocking sculpture, a hologram of shapes.