A standing ovation welcomed the Martha’s Vineyard Public Charter School’s class of 2013 to the stage at their commencement ceremony last Sunday afternoon. The crowd cheered excitedly as the graduates, wearing wreaths of purple flowers in their hair, entered the white tent.

The rafters echoed with laughter as 12 high school seniors gathered in Polly Hill Arboretum’s far barn to commemorate their graduation with a simple lunch. These students are the Martha’s Vineyard Public Charter School’s Class of 2013, the school’s largest graduating class since its first class of seniors graduated in 2001.

Eighteen Martha’s Vineyard Public Charter School students and their seven chaperones landed in Rome on April 8. The annual eighth grade trip was inaugurated in 2002 and continues to be led by Charter School Social Studies teacher, Jonah Maidoff. During the 11-day visit, the students spent time in Rome, Florence, the Tuscan countryside and San Giovanni V’al D’Arno where they met up with their pen pals, Italian students of the Instituto Comprensivo Marconi.

A soft buzz of 250,000 watts of energy echoed off of Watcha Path in Edgartown on Thursday afternoon.

“Listen to that hum,” Bill Bennett told a group of Martha’s Vineyard Public Charter School students standing next to several transformers at Mr. Bennett’s new solar array.

Charter School Play

Next weekend, March 30 and 31, the Martha’s Vineyard Public Charter School will present its annual theater production. This year they take on Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a play with essentially four plots in one: a royal wedding, prank-playing fairies, a love quadrangle and workmen trying to put on a play. Something for everyone indeed.

Assignments included making French toast, building a robot, taking a yoga class and spray-painting stencil graffiti. For homework: chopping wood for the fire. The tests, voluntarily taken, were those of the imagination — how to fashion an outfit of candy wrappers, what color to paint the clay figurine, how best to build a shelter in the Vermont woods.

Welcome to project period at the Martha’s Vineyard Public Charter School.

They studied ancient Roman attire, wrote a series of memoirs, documented leaving the family business for the first time and excelled in photography.

And now this small group of distinguished artists, writers and self-directed learners will graduate this weekend from the Martha’s Vineyard Public Charter School. Known for their enthusiasm and creativity, the graduating senior class of nine students will accept their diplomas at a ceremony tomorrow afternoon in West Tisbury.

They recycle paper, plastic and metal and use local potatoes, carrots and lettuce in their cafeteria. Plans are in the works for a school garden and compost pile. And now, the Martha’s Vineyard Public Charter School hopes to become the first net zero, carbon neutral school in the nation.

Charter School Students

Plan Katrina Relief Work

A group of high school students from the Martha’s Vineyard Public Charter School will return to Biloxi, Miss., to continue their Hurricane Katrina relief work. The students will be traveling Jan. 6 through 12 to work with the Restoration Point non-profit organization.

This past Saturday, the Martha's Vineyard Public Charter
School held its seventh high school graduation. Seven students graduated
in the year 2007.

"We were going to do it on July seventh," said Sam
Berlow, president of the school's board of trustees, "but we
decided that was too much."