The Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School class of 2014 showed promise four years ago as freshmen, their teachers said. At class night Friday they will be recognized for their achievements when more than $1 million is awarded in student scholarships, a first in school history.

Valedictorian Sarah Ortlip-Sommers was editor of the school newspaper and took more AP classes in a year than most take in four. She calls her violin an extension of herself and credits her parents Michele Ortlip and Josh Summers for her achievements.

Families and students gathered beneath a whimsically-decorated tent Sunday afternoon to celebrate the Martha’s Vineyard Public Charter School graduation. “Trust your heart,” Fawn Pelletier, a 13-year student of the school told her four fellow graduates.

On Thursday afternoon, 10 days before graduation, the small class from the Martha's Vineyard Public Charter School gathered at the Polly Hill Arboretum for lunch in the garden.

Every school graduation is important. But the graduation taking place this Saturday, June 2, from 3 to 7 p.m. at the Martha's Vineyard Public Charter School is in a class of its own.

Tomorrow, the charter school will celebrate its first ever graduation. Four students make up the graduating class. Walker Blackwell, Elana Robinson-Lynch, Indaia Whitcombe and Sarah Maxner will receive diplomas and speak at the event. Thursday morning, the four students talked with the Gazette about the school and their lives.

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."

Ten smiling students will appear in the Gazette next week as the top-ranking academic performers in the 2008 graduating class of Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School, following a decision by high school principal Margaret (Peg) Regan to continue a longstanding tradition.

A life on Martha’s Vineyard, last year in Delhi, next year in Cairo and Stanford after that. Some people might relish the comfort and security of the bounded Island domain, but Sarah Johnson, this year’s co-valedictorian at the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School, wants to explore.

She shares the honor with Mary Harrington, who could not be reached for an interview.

It often begins with tears, the dropping off of a young child at preschool. In the classroom it is the little boy or girl whose tears flow. Later, in the car, it is mom or even dad who cries, the strongest of souls moved to mush at this new beginning. The end, high school graduation, is so far away at that moment as to seem impossible. But as every parent knows, it all goes by so fast.