When school bells ring this morning, kindergarten students won’t be the only ones with butterflies. The school district processed paperwork for 100 new staff members this summer, and many more returning employees took on new roles.

Cross country runners representing 460 in all, competed in the seventh Annual Martha’s Vineyard Invitational Saturday at the regional high school.

Bishop Feehan ran away with team wins in both the boys’ and girls’ competitions.

The Vineyard as a team was seventh in 11.

Playing before a large home crowd at the Daniel McCarthy Field, the Vineyarders took a 21-0 loss to visiting Bedford on Saturday afternoon.

The Buccaneers got on the board in the first quarter and kept going, scoring once more in the third before putting away the final touchdown in the fourth with less than two minutes remaining.

An unmanned rocket launched by NASA and headed for the moon was visible in the night sky off the south side of Martha's Vineyard late Friday night. The five-stage Minotaur rocket was launched from the Virginia coast at 11:27 p.m.

Off the coast of Chatham, a team of nearly 20 expert fishermen and scientists from around the country is ready. For the past 30 days they have lived and fished aboard the M/V OCEARCH in hopes of capturing, examining and tagging live white sharks.

A 17th century West Tisbury farmhouse believed to be the second oldest house on the Vineyard is set to be sold at a public auction later this month.

The Old Parsonage house on State Road in West Tisbury is owned by Tara Whiting and her brother Daniel Whiting.

Seas around the Vineyard are rising slightly faster than the global average and Island planners should prepare for significant sea level rise by the end of the century, a new climate change report has found.

The Vineyard Conservation Society report examines the effects of climate change on the Martha’s Vineyard and its surroundings.

Each morning when boatbuilder Ted Box wakes up, drives to his makeshift warehouse on the Vineyard Haven harbor and climbs the scaffolding to gaze at his 70-foot scow schooner, he is confronted with all the problems of completing a big boat. Ted is 68, a master shipwright, has seen many a craft to the finish, but is looking toward daunting work ahead.

On Monday familiar yellow buses will roll over Island roads, stopping along the way to collect their precious cargo: school-age children from kindergarten through high school.

And another Vineyard school year begins.

Author Robert Putnam in his book Bowling Alone, published in 2000, examined trends in American society and concluded that the country was growing apart due to lack of community involvement. His thesis pointed to a disengaged populace that was more isolated and therefore less likely to be empathetic. The traditional outlets for bringing a community together were no longer thriving, he said, from bowling leagues to PTA meetings, and as a result the country as a whole was suffering.