NCTV School Videos

Jun. 18th, 2019 School Committee

The newly formed English Learner Parent Advisory Committee introduces itself and its elected board, part of what the state’s LOOK Act set out to encourage, and presents partly in Spanish with translation. Its aims are concrete: after-school programming for English learners, ways to raise the academic success of bilingual students, and winter social events that bring more families in. Athletics closes the year with participation numbers — 389 high school and 152 middle school students played at least one sport, and the combined roster count has risen from 499 five years ago to 681.

Jun. 4th, 2019 School Committee

The high school reports on a year spent measuring itself against the accreditation standards, work that becomes a self-reflection report written over the summer and then revised with staff once they return. Enrollment is up eight students, which the chair calls a mixed blessing. Hiring is in reasonable shape with several teaching assistant posts open from new budget lines and retirements, though math and science at the middle and high schools remain a worry — and housing, as ever, is what decides whether a candidate can say yes.

May 21st, 2019 School Committee

Middle school teachers present on the year’s mathematics work and what they brought back from the national teachers of mathematics conference. The district’s coordinated program review also comes due, the state visit that arrives once every six years, with the reviewer on the island in late April. The longest exchange is procedural but real: whether to hold a forum where parents and staff can raise policy concerns directly, with one member warning against reopening policies without hearing from everyone who has to work under them.

May 7th, 2019 School Committee

Guidance reports back on a year transformed by a single position the committee funded: a testing coordinator, described as life-changing. The same report carries the district’s first dual enrollment course with Cape Cod Community College, long discussed and finally running. A presentation on the state funding formula explains how the foundation budget estimates what educating a student should cost, and lays out the three competing proposals then before the legislature — the governor’s, two House bills and one in the Senate.

Apr. 2nd, 2019 School Committee

A short meeting given mostly to the superintendent’s evaluation, read into the record standard by standard: exemplary on law, policy and ethical guidelines, proficient or better across management, human resources, fiscal systems and cultural proficiency, and proficient overall. A member notes in passing that the superintendent is the only person in town whose performance is reviewed in public. A request is made, apparently for the first time, that graduation be printed on the school calendar so families can plan around it.

Mar. 19th, 2019 School Committee

The culinary team is honored after competing against thirteen Massachusetts schools, and the students field questions about budgeting and keeping records for what they bought. Then the announcement that resets the year: the superintendent has agreed to stay on another twelve months, which gives the committee room to choose a successor, or a deputy, without hurrying. The special education parent group reports on a year of monthly meetings and outside speakers, among them an adaptive sailing program.

Mar. 5th, 2019 School Committee

A short meeting whose public comment cuts to the heart of the search: the fear that the committee is looking for a perfect person who does not exist. The annual dropout report is presented, introduced by a presenter who concedes it is nobody’s favorite, and this year includes the state’s formula for the calculation — students who leave over the summer count against the October enrollment. The discussion turns to why students go, financial pressure among the reasons, and what a GED offers those who do. Enrollment is 1,669.

Feb. 19th, 2019 School Committee

A student academic team opens the meeting by putting quiz questions to the committee, which does not distinguish itself on the periodic table. Enrollment is up ten across the district. The FY20 budget then goes to a vote at $30,636,642, and it is not unanimous: one member states for the record that he cannot and will not support it, still dissatisfied with the percentages the town offered and with what had to come off the list. The superintendent search is down to three candidates after one withdrew that day.

Jan. 22nd, 2019 School Committee

Second quarter accounts, with lunch sales up more than $5,700 over the same 72 days of service and free and reduced meals at 40 percent by the end of December against 36 percent a year earlier. A cyberbullying matter is reported as handled: the students involved were told plainly what it would mean if it continued, including a conversation with the police, and it has not. The committee deliberately passes over adopting the FY20 budget, hoping for news before it has to vote.

Jan. 15th, 2019 School Committee

The public hearing on the FY20 education appropriation, which asks for an increase of $1,450,000. Enrollment is the frame, as always: growth at the elementary school is now mostly in preschool, and the high school has taken over from it as the largest school in the district at 539 students. Chapter 70 aid has risen, which makes the town’s side easier, and the formula behind it is about to change. A plan to consolidate offices would put special education where the central office sits — not ready for September, but perhaps in time to welcome a new superintendent.

Jan. 8th, 2019 School Committee

The town administrator and finance director present the town budget, and explain the state program that pays for consultants whose work other towns can then copy — Nantucket used it to overhaul its financial management policies. A district report card follows, assembling publicly available data in one place so the district can be measured against others with similar enrollment and similar shares of English learners and special education students. A $14,993 donation of tools equips the high school auto shop.

Dec. 18th, 2018 School Committee

Budget development continues, driven by what the superintendent calls enrollment first and the needs of those enrolled second — which produces additions at every school, in special education and among English learners. The elementary school makes its case on 20 children with identified needs due in kindergarten next year, and a teacher moved down from the intermediate school to cover second grade. A note of realism runs through it: the police, fire and public works departments are asking the same town for money, and one year the appropriation came in below even the roll-forward.

Dec. 4th, 2018 School Committee

Budget development begins in a new format, with each department showing what share of the district budget it holds and how much of that goes to staffing before it asks for anything. The superintendent frames the exercise honestly: the appropriation will not cover everything the committee is about to hear, and the point of presenting the full need first is to know what is being cut when the number arrives. A high school program presents its own case for being funded as a department in its own right. Enrollment slips to 1,670.

Nov. 13th, 2018 School Committee

First quarter spending comes in about $310,000 below the same point last year, and the Community School’s money from the town is down $15,000 on balance — the appropriation rose from $400,000 to $450,000, but the $65,000 rental offset disappeared. The number that draws comment is in the lunch report: free and reduced meals hold at 40 percent of everything served, against 39 percent a year earlier, about 26 percent three years before that, and 8 percent within memory. Capital planning begins on a five-year horizon that will have to move faster if enrollment keeps adding 50 to 100 students a year.

Nov. 6th, 2018 School Committee

The preschool presentation describes planning a budget for children the district has not met: early intervention sends referrals with little more than a date of birth, enrollment keeps rolling in through January, and some children surface only when a doctor makes a referral after a physical. The homeschooling liaison explains a process that runs on twice-yearly check-ins. The Community School notes that its town appropriation has sat at roughly $1 million for years, the exception being the $1.4 million granted the year the intermediate school opened and brought custodians, administrators, a nurse and a librarian with it.

Oct. 2nd, 2018 School Committee

Public comment opens the search that will shape the year, asking the committee to convene a search committee and let the community take part in choosing the next superintendent. The English learner team presents, with enrollment almost exactly where it stood a year ago. The MCAS and accountability presentation explains how the state’s new system works, and the substitute teacher rate is added to the agenda by amendment — the district cannot spend a substitute budget it has no substitutes to spend it on, and the shortfall lands on the teachers who cover.

Sep. 18th, 2018 School Committee

The school resource officers give their annual account of the work — lockdown training for staff, time in special education classrooms so students meet a police officer as a friendly face, truancy visits, and a standing arrangement where either officer covers all four schools when the other is out. The superintendent follows with a broader observation: enrollment is rising and so is the share of students arriving with needs that are physical, social and emotional rather than academic. Budget planning directives are approved.

Jun. 22nd, 2020 School Committee

The last meeting of a year that ended nothing like it began. The chair congratulates the class of 2020 and marks two departures: the high school principal, who arrived in 2012, led the state administrators’ association in 2018, and opened honors and AP registration to anyone who wanted it, and the superintendent, who retires on Friday. The technology review is the substance — a new communication app, a printing system, a data dashboard, and the end of a phone service whose outages sometimes ran a full day, replaced by one that has gone down twice for under ten minutes. The committee also debates whether to add a second public comment period, which one member opposes as an invitation to longer meetings.

Jun. 20th, 2020 School Committee

The annual reorganization meeting, opened by the superintendent. A newly elected member attends but cannot vote, not yet having been sworn in at Town Hall. Officers are chosen and subcommittee seats filled — policy, the Cape Cod Collaborative, the ad hoc budget group. The one real argument is about which outside bodies deserve a committee member at the table, and whether any group asking for one should have to supply its meeting dates first; the counter-argument is that the list has no natural end.

May 5th, 2020 School Committee

A state review comes back complimentary, singling out the improvement plan, the Wednesday extended workday, the open enrollment policy that lets any student into honors and AP courses, and the range of interventions available. The third quarter accounts show the closure arriving in the numbers: $374,652 below last year’s spending, most of it unspent purchase orders and payroll never reaching full employment. Replacing the high school and middle school boiler is called critical, and though the town has tabled capital requests it has found a way to fund that one. All handheld radios across campus have been replaced with police-grade equipment.

Apr. 7th, 2020 School Committee

The first remote meeting to take public comment. The district report card is presented in detail — published in English and Spanish, released by the state each February, too late to be much use in budget season — and prompts a question about how many graduates go on to college, answered at roughly two thirds. Comparing this year’s MCAS with last year’s is acknowledged to be difficult. The special education parent council reports, and the committee works through the superintendent’s evaluation against the state standards.

Mar. 24th, 2020 School Committee

The first meeting after the schools closed, held remotely under the governor’s emergency order and, unusually, with no public comment taken. Every presentation on the agenda is tabled by motion so the committee can get to the one thing that matters: the superintendent’s statement on what the district is doing in a state of emergency. Teachers have already been reaching students through Google Hangouts and Zoom, staff unfamiliar with either are being trained this week, and a group of educators is meeting daily to build a framework for families. The chair closes by reminding everyone to keep their distance.

Mar. 3rd, 2020 School Committee

A student is recognized for singing in the state music educators’ district festival. Friends of Nantucket Public Schools presents its budget, now carrying a field trip line that has no money in it yet but exists because of a conversation the year before. Enrollment is unchanged, facilities discussion turns on netting to stop tennis balls reaching the parking lot, and small grants are approved for a first-grade class and an AP Calculus course.

Feb. 4th, 2020 School Committee

The 2020-21 calendar reaches its final draft and goes to the principals for faculty feedback. Enrollment slips two students to 1,677, and the superintendent runs through the reasons families leave, private school among them. The search for the next high school principal is under way with the position posted. The district improvement plan is approved as a living document, over a member’s objection that it still carries completion dates already past.

Jan. 22nd, 2020 School Committee

The committee congratulates the high school principal, who is leaving, before turning to the second quarter accounts and a Community School whose revenues are up about $61,000, $50,000 of that the larger town appropriation rather than anything earned. A bullying case is discussed in general terms — both families brought in, the police brought in to explain how serious the conduct was — and a member observes that bullying has become a word applied to too much. Another serves notice that he does not intend the budget vote to be unanimous this year.

Jan. 15th, 2020 School Committee

The public hearing on the education appropriation, described by staff as a dry run for the finance committee. Enrollment is charted from 2010: 1,289 students then, 1,683 now, with 1,725 projected for next year — more than 400 added in a decade. The FY21 request is $31,796,642, up $1,660,000, and 83 percent of it is payroll, a share that runs closer to 90 percent once you look at an individual school. The additions asked for are an English learner teacher at the elementary school, where the district is already short, and a preschool teacher.

Jan. 7th, 2020 School Committee

Staff report from a statewide gathering of districts working under the Innovation Pathways grant, which ties high school coursework to careers. Enrollment is down seven. The intermediate school presents its budget and the evening MCAS tutoring program that has worked well enough to be extended to the middle school — the trick being to get students into the building at night, which restaurants sponsoring the food and clubs serving it seem to manage.

Dec. 17th, 2019 School Committee

The town administrator and finance director bring the committee the same FY21 presentation they gave the Select Board the week before. The numbers the schools care about: $26,219,000 in school salaries and $5,577,000 in school operational expenses, set against fixed costs that include active health insurance projected at $10,281,000, an increase of 8.75 percent, and retiree health insurance at $3,333,000. Every department budget was reviewed between mid-October and mid-November, the schools among them.

Dec. 10th, 2019 School Committee

Members report back from the state school committee and superintendents’ conference, where the sessions on buildings left them counting their luck: other districts are not asking for room to grow but for windows, doors and fields that work. The elementary school presents its budget and the translation app now used district-wide with families. The frankest exchange is about why teaching assistants are so hard to keep — the pay was never the draw, the calendar and the benefits were, and both are what people weigh when they leave.

Dec. 3rd, 2019 School Committee

Public comment asks how much say the faculty have had in the draft calendar, now on its fourth version and shared with the union’s leadership. Enrollment is up a single student, and housing remains the reason families arrive and leave. The technology budget brings a small piece of good news: enough Chromebooks at last to cover every MCAS test and push older machines down to the intermediate school, with a surplus that can go to seniors who have been doing homework on a phone.

Nov. 19th, 2019 School Committee

The list of Adams Scholars has more than doubled, from about 15 to twice that. Math interventionists and coaches present on what is being done in the classrooms. The longest discussion is about buildings and land: enrollment leveled off for the first time this October, which buys the district time before it needs a new school, and a plan identifying roughly 20 percent in reductions is offered less as a commitment than as something to take into conversations with the town about capital money. A member asks to have the state’s professed flexibility in writing.

Nov. 5th, 2019 School Committee

National Merit Scholars are recognized, out of a field that began with 1.5 million students sitting the qualifying test. The Community School then lays out the shape of its workforce: 17 employees whose benefits cost just over half the town appropriation, alongside somewhere between 100 and 200 part-time staff across a year who do not qualify for any. The pool is the pinch point, harder to schedule each year as enrollment grows and more classes need it.

Oct. 1st, 2019 School Committee

A resident describes in public comment seeing children in a dangerous situation, calling the school and then the police, leaving a message with the resource officer, and waiting for someone to call back — ending with a promise that next time she will not simply drive away. The MCAS presentation is introduced as possibly the first in years to bring good news, and explains how the old labels of restructuring and corrective action, which could force a change of calendar or of leadership, have become the current accountability ratings. The school resource officers give their annual report.

Sep. 17th, 2019 School Committee

The teachers’ association reads a letter to the committee about how the year began at the middle school: no schedule for staff or students on the first day, a scheduling committee that worked on models all spring and was never consulted over the summer, and a week improvised into “Whaler Welcome Week” to buy time — after which seventh and eighth graders were handed a schedule on a Thursday and a revised one the next morning. The letter ends on a separate grievance: that the whole staff was called in and told central office had heard they were posting negatively on social media, with no proof offered. The handbook vote is tabled.

Aug. 20th, 2019 School Committee

The committee reviews its goals for the year, including the educationally sound budget development it has asked for consistently, and works through the student handbooks after the policy subcommittee’s recommendations. The change with teeth is on electronic devices, which must now be switched off unless a teacher specifically permits otherwise — wording chosen so staff can point at the policy rather than argue. Smartwatches come up as the next thing nobody has a rule for.

Aug. 6th, 2019 School Committee

The year-end report closes a budget $1,333,000 above the previous year, $133,000 of it a one-time increase for technology equipment, spent to the last dollar with payroll at 80 percent. The high school principal then gives his tenth and last annual Advanced Placement presentation, and makes the case for the open enrollment policy he counts as his legacy: a decade after the district let any student sign up for an AP course, none of what was predicted has happened — no collapse in achievement, no plague of locusts.

Jul. 9th, 2019 School Committee

A short first meeting of the year that welcomes a new middle school principal and totals up what the community gives: donations have reached $650,000 over recent years, funding programs the budget does not reach. July enrollment is presented with the caveat that it always moves, kindergarten most of all. The educator evaluation report follows, a practice begun after the district discovered in 2010 that a great many evaluations were simply not happening.

Jun. 15th, 2021 School Committee

The first meeting held in the room again, with the chair joining by video from off-island. MCAS is finished: most of the remote students came in to sit it, and those who could not took a version administered over video that demanded constant attention from the proctors watching them on screen. End-of-year celebrations return in modified form. The superintendent’s evaluation is read into the record, crediting the safe return to in-person learning and warning that the year’s setbacks make added academic and emotional support essential.

Jun. 4th, 2021 School Committee Vacancy Interviews

Candidates for the vacant seat are interviewed in open session, each asked what a district returning fully in person in September should treat as its priority and what the hardest part will be. The answers converge on the same worry: a great deal of ground was lost, the coming standardized tests will show it, and the remediation required will be more than teachers expect. One candidate says plainly that he is no admirer of standardized testing and questions why his son sat an MCAS at all after eighteen months out of school.

Apr. 1st, 2021 School Committee

The return-to-in-person plan goes out to families, with the students whose parents chose to keep them home continuing remotely, and an addendum setting out how the district would quarantine a class, a pod, a school or all of it. The district report card is presented page by page, each linked back to the state’s own source. A member cautions that the hospital’s case figures are the lowest possible count, since tests taken elsewhere and at home reach the state but not the hospital. Staff close by asking the committee to act on the professional development promised in the anti-racism resolution it adopted the previous June.

Mar. 18th, 2021 School Committee

The state removes the choice: all districts must return to full in-person learning in phases, with kindergarten through grade five back on April 5, middle school on April 28 and high school still undecided. Distancing drops to a three-foot minimum alongside masks and hand sanitizing, and more than 300 educators on the island have already had a first dose. MCAS will go ahead regardless: it is federally mandated, and the waivers districts hoped for are not being granted.

Mar. 2nd, 2021 School Committee

Public comment argues that the case numbers now justify a full-time return. Enrollment rises 12 to 1,650 as families come back from extended trips. The MCAS windows are announced, still marked tentative, with English language arts opening April 5. Planning for summer runs up against the island’s permanent constraint — finding teachers to hire — and the committee disagrees about which evaluation rubric to use for the superintendent, one version having arrived minutes before the meeting.

Feb. 18th, 2021 School Committee

A staff survey on the vaccine comes back: 293 of 360 employees responded and 254 said they intend to take it. Buses can now carry two to a bench for the older grades, masks on and windows open two inches, so the district starts working through its waiting lists. The technology team explains why it chose the middle of a pandemic to move everyone onto a single learning platform, and staff describe Black History Month work running through English, art and the library, taught half in the room and half through the screen.

Feb. 2nd, 2021 School Committee

The music department finally presents, and the account is bleak: no singing indoors at all, outdoors only at a distance and masked, and the same restrictions on every brass and woodwind instrument. A member challenges the posting of the meeting itself, arguing it was not properly noticed and that holding it would breach the open meeting law. The annual report has no MCAS results to carry — English learners were the only group assessed that year — so each school instead documented the closure and the overnight shift to remote teaching.

Jan. 21st, 2021 School Committee

A meeting that never opens. The chair arrives to find no other member present, and without a quorum she cannot call it to order. The music department had been scheduled to present and its staff are all waiting on screen; she apologizes, moves the presentation to February 2, and asks each of them in turn whether that date works before closing at 6:33.

Jan. 15th, 2021 School Committee

A public hearing on the town appropriation, with no votes taken. Enrollment is charted from 2010 forward: steady growth every year through 2019, then a slight decline that staff attribute to the economy and the island’s cost of living. The federal grants are walked through one by one, and the Community School explains that it cannot honestly commit to next year’s goals because nobody knows what it will be allowed to run. Technical failures dog the meeting throughout, including the chair’s own computer.

Jan. 5th, 2021 School Committee

Enrollment drops to 1,642 after the holidays, the usual pattern of families away on extended and often international trips. The Student Opportunity Act plan is delayed again: it depends on an increase in state aid that the pandemic and a late state budget have pushed into the new year, and the minimum $30 per pupil the district was counting on is no longer certain. The town administrator and finance director present the town budget, and the social media policy is amended.

Dec. 1st, 2020 School Committee

Four departments present their budgets, the Community School first, against a year nobody can forecast. Teachers are credited for making the new platform work, teaching the students in the room and the students at home at the same time — something they had been nervous about all summer. A principal describes not recognizing children who grew a foot in quarantine and are hard to tell apart behind masks, and greeting them with an elbow instead of a high five. The first vaccines have just been approved, and the meeting ends on what that might permit.

Nov. 24th, 2020 School Committee

The district accounts for a cluster of 22 cases in the school community: 14 people are out of isolation and well, eight remain quarantined, and roughly eight of the 22 are fully remote students who had not been in a building at all — not one case has involved transmission inside a school. Attention turns to Thanksgiving travel and getting everyone back on the 30th. The committee also reworks its goals for the year, which were written before any of this and no longer describe the job.

Nov. 3rd, 2020 School Committee

Enrollment is down 11 students from last year, with too many moving parts to say exactly why. Most of the meeting turns on what counts as a close contact at lunch: six feet and fifteen minutes is the standard, and a member presses on whether it would really be burdensome to telephone the parents of children who ate near a positive case and ask them to watch for symptoms, given there have been fewer than a handful of cases in the schools. Professional development on staff wellbeing is added, framed around the oxygen mask you fit before helping anyone else.

Oct. 22nd, 2020 School Committee

Cohorts B and C return to the buildings this month, and midway through the meeting the superintendent reports that the island’s designation has moved from red to yellow as of four o’clock that afternoon — which clears the way for middle and high school students to come back too. English learner enrollment reaches 390. With no MCAS to work from and no certainty the spring test will happen, the district adopts a national assessment across kindergarten through grade nine to measure individual growth three times a year.

Oct. 6th, 2020 School Committee

Thirty-eight percent of students are attending in person; the other 62 percent are learning at home, and a parent asks in public comment when the rest will come back. Enrollment is 1,673. Much of the meeting is spent on the state metric that has put the island in the red: every positive test taken at the hospital counts against a population the state puts at 11,000, though the year-round population is nearer 17,000, and visitors’ tests count even though visitors do not. Channel 18 is off the air, so the meeting exists only online.

Sep. 24th, 2020 School Committee

The town’s health director joins the meeting to help the committee decide whether to return to the hybrid model on October 1 as planned, explaining why cumulative case counts can only ever rise and why the slope of the line matters more than its height. A resident argues in public comment for full in-person learning with a remote option, pointing to a summer of gatherings that produced no surge. Budget directives are also on the agenda, which the superintendent admits feels surreal with school only days old.

Sep. 10th, 2020 School Committee

Summer programs are reviewed after a season that ran mostly online: in-person home visits for the students who needed them most, social workers checking in weekly, and day camp at about half its usual size — yet enrollment and attendance both rose, which surprised the staff running it. The face covering policy returns amended. The superintendent notes that the work she arrived to do on curriculum, equity and assessment data is still on the list, but has been pushed to one side by the pandemic.

Sep. 9th, 2020 School Committee Workshop

The closing minutes of a workshop on reopening protocols, as the chair asks each member in turn to say whether they approve the health and safety plans as drafted. One member declines and abstains, explaining that having voted against the hybrid opening he cannot now endorse the protocols for it, while acknowledging he has found nothing left uncovered. The others agree, on the shared understanding that the protocols will be rewritten all year as children actually arrive in the buildings.

Aug. 26th, 2020 School Committee

Five days before schools open, a teacher uses public comment to say the committee has heard from everyone except the people who will have to teach hybrid and remote every day, and that the anxiety among staff is real. The committee adopts two new policies written for the moment, on face coverings and on remote learning. Registrations are running at about 235, half of them kindergarten and half pre-K, and the problem nobody has solved is morning arrival, where markings on the ground and a second and third contingency plan stand in for keeping children apart.

Aug. 4th, 2020 School Committee

The hybrid schedule is settled: students in the building two days a week with a remote day for everyone, deliberately small groups at first so that mask breaks, handwashing and moving through a building can be taught and practiced as the new routines they are. Federal relief brings $375,000 that cannot be shared with the private schools and must be spent by December 31. The hardest question is substitutes: illness is not the only risk, because a single case sends a whole class home and its teachers with it.

Jul. 7th, 2020 School Committee

The first meeting of a year that will be held almost entirely over video, convened remotely under the governor’s emergency order. Staff walk through the three reopening models the state is floating — in person with new safety requirements, hybrid, and fully remote — alongside a fourth that only arrives with a vaccine, and which nobody expects to reach next year. The arithmetic of three-foot spacing turns a room that held 26 into one that holds 22, and the finance director is asked how any of it is paid for when the state is talking about level-services-plus budgeting and cannot say whether the federal money will come.

Jun. 21st, 2022 School Committee

An equity working group reports on a year spent reading MCAS results, course enrollments and the district report card through a lens of who is being served, and comes away with two staffing recommendations and more questions than answers — after what one presenter calls the hardest teaching year of a 22-year career. The technology director describes a panel on children and the internet that drew only a handful of families. The committee approves a three-year contract for education support professionals and takes up a calendar change setting the last day of pre-K at an early release.

Jun. 7th, 2022 School Committee

End-of-year celebrations fill the calendar: baccalaureate at St. Paul’s, awards night, and graduation outdoors on the football field, with 14 seniors receiving community foundation scholarships from nine different funds. Enrollment reaches 1,710. The committee also reviews its own self-evaluation, which found broad agreement that its policies are current and its budget process transparent and built from the ground up, and rather less agreement about the district’s mission statement.

May 24th, 2022 School Committee

A kindergarten parent opens the meeting with a documented grievance: the calendar approved in August and sent to families set June 21 as the last day of kindergarten, but the version on the district website was quietly changed to June 17 while still showing the original approval date, and families had booked time off around it. Hiring is the other weight on the meeting — more than 46 teaching, counseling and specialist positions open with 17 teachers hired so far, plus two administrative vacancies — and special education performance finally clears the state average after four years below it.

May 10th, 2022 School Committee

Enrollment crosses 1,700 for the first time, reaching 1,708 with six new students at the high school. All three school articles passed at town meeting the week before. The finance report shows the Community School’s own program and fee revenue up $177,000 — more than the headline figure suggests, because the town appropriation fell from $550,000 to $500,000 — and the lunch program’s deficit substantially reduced. The multilingual parent advisory council presents, and families are asked to mask for another week.

Apr. 26th, 2022 School Committee

Town meeting returns in person at the high school, with overflow seating and electronic voting, and three articles bear on the schools: the operating budget, capital expenditures and athletic facilities. The district report cards are reviewed with an unavoidable caveat — there is no usable achievement data from the pandemic year to compare against. The special needs advisory council presents, covering the state’s inclusive concurrent enrollment program for students continuing past high school, the bullying policy, and a family night planned for June.

Apr. 12th, 2022 School Committee

A workshop on the food service contract as it comes up for renewal, centered on the provision that would let the district spend on locally sourced food and on a grant that would cover the gap between an island farm’s price and a wholesaler’s. The food service director walks through what the health department does and does not allow — once food leaves her kitchen it cannot come back — and what she could do with full staffing: cooking demonstrations at each school, and taste surveys to find out what students will actually eat.

Apr. 5th, 2022 School Committee

MCAS season is under way across grades three through eight and ten, with math and science updates promised for late spring. Enrollment is up eight to 1,693, the withdrawals all families leaving the state rather than students dropping out. The food service contract reaches its fifth and final year, and the subsidy it needs has climbed to $172,000 — $80,000 above what was budgeted this year and three times the $56,000 it started at in 2017. More Adams Scholarship recipients are introduced, and the librarians present their year.

Mar. 22nd, 2022 School Committee

The science curriculum review finds the district had practices but no structures behind them — no dedicated funds, time or materials management — leaving teachers in what staff call hunt-and-seek mode, looking for lessons aligned to the state standards on their own. Introductory physics is added as a second path to the science MCAS so students have a choice. Public comment returns to PFAS, and eleven Golf Club scholarship finalists are named after interviews, writing samples and presentations.

Mar. 8th, 2022 School Committee

Town officials join the meeting for a vote on acquiring a piece of surplus land for the district, the product of months of negotiation with the Select Board and town manager. Enrollment slips from 1,690, the withdrawals concentrated in the high school grades. The superintendent reports from a national conference where districts in Colorado described sending recruiters to large teaching colleges to attract candidates of color, and where a session for women superintendents noted that they still hold only 26 percent of the job nationally. The face covering policy is amended as discussed.

Feb. 23rd, 2022 School Committee

A single-item meeting on the mask mandate, taken up the week the state’s own mandate expires. Public comment runs entirely one way — a parent, two juniors, and the chorus director who has rehearsed a masked spring musical since December and cannot make her singers understood or seen — and when the chair asks whether anyone wishes to speak in favor of masks, nobody does. The superintendent reports vaccination rates climbing steeply by age, from about 29 percent at the elementary school to 82 percent at the high school, and two staff surveys: 64 percent of 199 teachers who answered said it was time, while the largest group preferred waiting a week past the February break, wary of the spike that followed the last two vacations and the staffing crisis that came with it. The committee votes 4 to 1 to wait, setting March 14 as the day masks come off, with the dissenting member arguing that enough is enough.

Feb. 8th, 2022 School Committee

A workshop devoted to artificial turf and PFAS — a meeting held in public rather than a public meeting, with questions taken on index cards. Researchers explain that turf blades are not made of PFAS but cannot be extruded without a processing aid that contains it, that compounds leach as the material breaks down under sunlight, and that others cannot yet be detected at all, leaving a risk they call unquantifiable. A Connecticut town that contracted for PFAS-free turf and tested before and after saw its levels double, with the manufacturer disputing the cause; the committee asks who would pay to remove a field and test the water.

Feb. 1st, 2022 School Committee

Cases are subsiding at last, down to 58 in a week from 84 the week before, and enrollment ticks up to 1,690. The food service company presents on a partnership running since 2012, including a grant arrangement that would cover the price difference between island farm produce and a mainland wholesaler so local food can get onto trays. The committee also works through an odd consequence of the pandemic: students who never sat the MCAS as sophomores were later given the option to take it purely to qualify for the Adams Scholarship.

Jan. 19th, 2022 School Committee

A short meeting given entirely to the public hearing on next year’s budget. Enrollment has flattened over six years, which staff attribute to the cost of living on the island or to the pandemic, and the FY23 request comes in about $1.7 million above the current $34,726,000 — with $969,000 in federal pandemic relief in the mix, and athletics, technology and the central office the smallest budgets in the district.

Jan. 18th, 2022 School Committee

Cases are still running about 25 a day across the district, though staff coverage has eased. The town manager and finance director present a $121,486,000 general fund, flag municipal employee housing as a significant problem, and note that the newly endorsed coastal resilience plan carries costs the town will have to prioritize and find outside money for. The annual report is reviewed, including the decision to leave last year’s MCAS scores out of it: testing happened under such varied conditions that the state told districts to treat the results as a diagnostic rather than a measure.

Jan. 4th, 2022 School Committee

COVID has hit the island hard over the holidays, with staff out sick or caring for family, and the committee works through what a positive test means for a student’s attendance record. Budget development begins school by school, and English learner staffing is the argument: the elementary school enrolls the most English learners but is staffed the same as every other building, a fourth teaching position has been posted, and a fifth is requested at half time — while an additional teaching assistant the district is already authorized to hire has drawn no applicants at all.

Dec. 21st, 2021 School Committee

A mobile vaccine clinic staffed by ten vaccinators came to the island over the weekend, with another planned for late winter. Three mid-year hires are introduced, two of whom chose to move thirty miles out to sea for the job. Special services makes its budget case on a ratio: the recommendation is one school psychologist for every 500 students, and Nantucket has two for just under 1,700, with bilingual evaluations in Spanish done on a stipend outside the school day. Student advisory councils report in, firmly in favor of more recess and no MCAS.

Dec. 7th, 2021 School Committee

Public comment warns the committee about PFAS in artificial turf and asks that any installation carry a bond or insurance policy against the cost if someone is made ill by the “forever chemicals” involved. The federal grants report follows, walking through a first pandemic relief grant of $109,437 spent entirely on cleaning supplies and protective equipment, a $9,061 early childhood grant for pre-K materials, and why the English learner grant looks small: the state counts individual students, not the district’s high proportion of them.

Nov. 16th, 2021 School Committee

Two parents and a group of educators come to public comment: one asking what the district offers a child who is already ahead, having worked up from teachers to principal to superintendent without an answer, and a special education liaison speaking for colleagues about unfilled positions, a social worker and an English learner teacher chief among them. The preliminary FY23 forecast is presented as a roll-forward starting point, and staff report back from the state school committee conference, where the sessions that landed hardest were on student voice and on rethinking mental health support.

Nov. 9th, 2021 School Committee

The annual ACCESS report is the heart of the meeting, and its numbers are striking: 707 Nantucket students — 41.5 percent — go home to a language other than English, 250 are identified as English learners, and the island has seen the steepest demographic change of any district in the state at 40.1 percent. MCAS results broken out by subgroup show the white student population outperforming the Hispanic population significantly, and current English learners faring better against state rates than former English learners do. Note: a technical fault leaves no picture between 0:55 and 42:15.

Oct. 19th, 2021 School Committee

The athletic booster club, funding island sports since 1965, comes to public comment over the new policy on food trucks at games: a fee has been set for outdoor events at the discretion of the superintendent and facilities director, and the club wants to know how trucks will be chosen when island restaurants have long supported the schools. A preliminary look at the 2021 MCAS follows, presented against a district that has just adopted new core values built around equity, hired math and literacy interventionists, and contracted outside help for professional development on equity by design.

Oct. 5th, 2021 School Committee

New rules for electric bikes on campus take effect, with a contract students sign and a numbered sticker for each registered bike; six are registered so far. Enrollment stands at 1,676. The school resource officer gives her annual account of the job — morning traffic, front-office check-ins, reviewing the weekend police log on Mondays, and lockdown consults that extend to the island’s private schools — and the high school reports more than 60 students taking dual enrollment courses through Cape Cod Community College.

Sep. 21st, 2021 School Committee

The teachers’ association uses public comment to ask the committee to leave the mask policy alone — students are used to it, test-and-stay is working, and the aim is keeping school open through the winter. Summer programs ran on two buses with three children to a seat, 15 teachers and 19 teaching assistants, and federal relief money covered high school credit recovery that students previously had to pay for. An architect reports that bids for the ball field and tennis courts came back far above expectations, contractors saying the job is too small to bid efficiently.

Aug. 19th, 2021 School Committee

The Community School opens the meeting with its finances: a roughly $1.7 million operation that starts from zero every year, with about $500,000 coming from the town and the rest from fees, grants and gifts, and a shutdown that left it holding credits for programs families had already paid for. The superintendent lays out draft goals for the year, among them hiring a coordinator for social-emotional learning, and the committee approves the calendar and the third year of the district improvement plan. Note: a technical fault makes the audio pop between 47:07 and 1:39:41.

Jul. 20th, 2021 School Committee

The superintendent presents the findings of her entry plan, a year of interviews and observation completed in the middle of a pandemic: graduates heading to strong colleges and scoring well on AP exams among the strengths, and equitable access for a rapidly diversifying student body, more mental health support, recruiting teachers who reflect the student body, and a move toward vocational offerings among the needs. Registration staff then explain how enrolling one child works — an hour to three with the family, then three to five hours of work afterward — and why registration and enrollment are never the same number.

Jun. 20th, 2023 School Committee

Public comment belongs to teachers, with their contract expiring and negotiations under way: speakers recall accepting a one percent raise in March 2020 so the district could keep running without layoffs, set that against the raise and market adjustment the police department has since received, and describe a year spent understaffed. The meeting also recaps graduation on June 16 and reviews the mentoring program, which paired 85 percent of new hires but could not always match them inside their own building or subject.

Jun. 6th, 2023 School Committee

Public comment presses the committee on vaping in the high school and middle school bathrooms, arguing the problem has been documented since 2019 and that a funding deadline will pass before quotes for detection equipment are even in hand; staff promise a figure at the next day’s work group. The superintendent reports 19 teaching and two administrative vacancies and names MCAS results below the state average in English and math as the district’s priority, and the facilities year in review is given partly from memory, its records lost to the cyber attack.

May 2nd, 2023 School Committee

The committee votes its FY24 recommendation to town meeting: $37,326,987, of which $31,096,602 is payroll and $6,230,385 operating, plus $600,000 for community school payroll. Third-quarter spending is $1.271 million above last year, and the community school’s own program revenues are up $115,000 once the larger town subsidy is set aside. The revived wellness committee recommends widening the district’s wellness policy to cover mental and emotional health, and an anonymous donor funds about 80 new football helmets.

Apr. 25th, 2023 School Committee

A parent asks the committee for a standing work group on bathroom safety at the high school, meeting regularly and reporting back. Recruitment stands at roughly 28 teaching and three administrative vacancies, with staff working job fairs in Philadelphia and Boston. An architect then presents the campus-wide master plan and building needs assessment, including whether the future school sketched on the plan is needed at all if enrollment growth flattens, and what staff housing would mean for the site.

Apr. 4th, 2023 School Committee

The technology director details the ransomware recovery: more than 2,500 devices found, cleaned and reformatted or queued, students back at work within a day and a half, the infected network still shut down, and two-factor authentication and passphrases now rolling out to staff who in some cases had not changed a password in years. A second intrusion attempt was caught and cut off within seconds. A second-grade teacher uses public comment to describe rising behavioral and social-emotional needs, and the grant paying for that support grows from $99,000 to $128,000.

Mar. 21st, 2023 School Committee

The district is working its way out of a cyber attack, with a final report sent to staff, families and the committee and more updates promised as needed. Spring sports begin, but the new baseball field and tennis courts will miss the season to contract delays. Athletics presents a rewritten emergency action plan aligning coaches, parents, police and paramedics, prompted by a professional football player’s cardiac arrest on national television.

Feb. 21st, 2023 School Committee

The public hearing on the FY24 budget takes no questions and instead lays out the case: enrollment from 2011 forward, an appropriation that has grown by more than $11 million since 2015, and payroll rising from its usual 79 to 81 percent of the budget to a projected 84. The requested staffing is tied directly to growth in the English learner and special education populations. Two policy language changes pass; the budget vote itself is put off to a special meeting.

Jan. 24th, 2023 School Committee

A change in state law reshapes student discipline, adding mediation, restorative justice and trauma-sensitive models as alternatives a principal must weigh before removing a student. The multilingual parent advisory council is organizing a presentation on attendance after close to 50 families asked for extended holiday trips to visit relatives abroad. Second-quarter spending runs $807,000 above last year, driven by repairs, vandalism and utilities, with electricity alone $45,000 over.

Jan. 10th, 2023 School Committee

Vandalism opens the meeting — vape pens flushed down toilets and the damage that follows — with the student representative asking why anyone would wreck the island’s only school building, and staff pointing out there is no line in the budget for it. The town manager and finance director present the town’s budget proposal, and the community school reports more than $200,000 raised in grants and gifts, with instructors being hired for the tennis courts opening in spring.

Dec. 20th, 2022 School Committee

Senior awards and Adams Scholarships open a full house. The English learner report is the striking number of the night: 46.5 percent of Nantucket students speak a language other than English at home and 17.3 percent are classified as English learners. The high school’s nursing and allied health track is built to graduate students already certified as nursing assistants, and the facilities and technology budgets for FY24 arrive essentially level funded, with fuel the open question.

Dec. 6th, 2022 School Committee

Safety and security leads: the year’s first joint meeting with local police, State Police and the fire department, the first lockdown drills at the elementary and intermediate schools in four years, and a full simulation to come that will test alarms, announcements and panic buttons together. Staffing is still 21 positions short. The high school presents its educational success program and self-paced credit recovery, and reports attendance at 92 percent and a 91.4 percent graduation rate for the class of 2021.

Nov. 15th, 2022 School Committee

The 2022 MCAS results are presented as scores and takeaways only: the state has asked districts to treat this year as a new baseline, so accountability ratings are left out of the comparison. The calendar returns for revision after the previous draft came in a day short of the required 180, and the preliminary FY24 forecast identifies fuel as the real exposure, electricity being hedged by the town’s forward contracts.

Nov. 1st, 2022 School Committee

The federal grants report delivers bad arithmetic: Title One has been halved, from $132,645 to $65,481, because census figures showed an 18.18 percent drop in child poverty and pushed the district below the eligibility threshold — which means $70,000 of a literacy specialist’s salary now falls to the operating budget. Title Two pays mentoring stipends for 20 educators brand new to teaching, Title Three covers $42,931 for English learners, and a $72,000 grant answers three consecutive years of state findings that the district identifies students for special education disproportionately.

Oct. 18th, 2022 School Committee

The math needs assessment is the substance of the meeting: a year of reviewing curriculum and instruction across every school found English learners and special education students scoring well below the state average, and a rise in partial-inclusion placements where math is not always taught by a math teacher. A first draft of next year’s calendar is presented in a new format, and the first-quarter report shows community school revenues up $153,000 against expenses up $118,000.

Oct. 4th, 2022 School Committee

With the superintendent away, the chair reports from a workshop with the Cape Cod Collaborative on the bus driver shortage: two drivers are in training, and no vans or utility buses are available to buy. Enrollment stands at 1,724 after September’s sixth and eighth grade counts are corrected. The Community School presents its year — early childhood programs that enroll the parent alongside the child, a dance program grown to 170 students, and a nursing assistant certification run with a Cape technical school and clinical hours at Our Island Home, so students need not leave the island to qualify.

Sep. 20th, 2022 School Committee

The new baseball field and five tennis courts are about 85 percent finished; the courts will be sealed this fall and left to cure in hope of spring play. The committee then adopts the budget calendar and the directives that govern it — building requests justified by projected enrollment, new staff offset from within unless the appropriation exceeds what bargaining requires, and roughly $70,000 of lost Title One money to absorb. Teacher contract negotiations open October 6.

Sep. 6th, 2022 School Committee

The superintendent reports a good opening week built around a keynote on universal design for learning, then turns to the bus shortage: three drivers are certified for the large buses with a fourth in training, and staggered start times are raised as the fix the district may have to make for next year. Each principal walks through handbook changes — grade-level lunches return to the cafeteria, the bullying incident report gets a direct link — and the committee approves the district improvement plan and a $62,000 grant for community school programming.

Aug. 9th, 2022 School Committee

Almost every classroom teaching position is filled three weeks before school opens, but five paraprofessional postings have drawn no candidates at all and 18 teaching assistant vacancies remain — a shortage staff describe as national rather than local. The FY22 year-end report closes a $32,876,000 budget spent in full, 80 percent of it payroll and $1.58 million above the year before, with utilities $205,000 over budget and heating oil alone up $131,000.

Jul. 19th, 2022 School Committee

Staff report back from the state superintendents’ summer institute, where the keynote on anti-racist education asked districts to rethink their responses to student misbehavior, and a panel of student leaders said plainly what had and had not worked on diversity and inclusion. Hiring is the other subject: 18 positions remain open, with high school math, school psychologists, social workers and adjustment counselors proving impossible to fill. Enrollment closed the year at 1,707 and is projected to open at 1,716, with a fifth-grade class added at the intermediate school.

Jun. 18th, 2024 School Committee

Public comment carries the first half of the meeting. A parent objects to the state’s health and physical education framework — specifically the sections on gender identity and sexual health reaching third graders — and asks how families can see and weigh in on what is taught; a second parent asks what the district’s policy is on students taking online courses on their own. The rest covers end-of-year celebrations and a graduating class of 125, hiring at 16 of 29 open teaching positions, a special education parent advisory council that cannot draw attendance to its meetings, and a reading and math data presentation built around median growth rather than raw scores.

Jun. 14th, 2024 School Committee

A short special meeting with a single item on the agenda: a vote to approve and send the proposed vessel speed reduction letter. The committee approves it unanimously and adjourns.

Jun. 4th, 2024 School Committee

A student presents research on a parasite found in Nantucket bay scallops, what the standard sampling method misses, and what it could mean for the scalloping industry. The technology department’s year in review follows — the wireless network held up through the March MCAS after a difficult fall, staffing is whole again, and a new director starts July 1 — alongside enrollment at 1,715, hiring at 10 of about 29 open teaching positions, and a teaching assistant contract running through 2027.

May 21st, 2024 School Committee

The report opens on the Golf Club’s scholarship ceremony, where 26 graduating seniors were honored, 15 of them heading into the professional workforce rather than to a four-year college. The high school outlines dual enrollment with Cape Cod Community College — free to juniors and seniors through grant funding, and open to any student regardless of immigration status — and the finance report has 70 percent of the budget spent, with the school lunch program running a $65,000 deficit that stays within its budgeted allowance.

May 14th, 2024 School Committee

Public comment reports that none of the 58 students in honors pre-calculus sat the new AP Precalculus exam, and asks what the district intends to do about it. An additional John and Abigail Adams Scholarship is presented to a senior who enrolled after last year’s round, and the committee works through the difference between registration and enrollment, which is why the two counts never match.

Apr. 2nd, 2024 School Committee

Enrollment is up one student to 1,708, with growth at the three lower schools offset by seven fewer at the high school. The building project hits a wall — no general contractors bid the work, so the district turns to modular units for the classroom space it needs — and the 2023 MCAS results are presented again, this time broken out by student subgroup.

Mar. 19th, 2024 School Committee

The meeting opens with the statement sent to staff and families after the death of a high school senior, and the reasoning behind the crisis management plan that kept school open the following Monday. Business resumes with open enrollment and how course recommendations work when students choose their own level, and a revision to the policy governing public comment at these meetings.

Mar. 5th, 2024 School Committee

Enrollment slips two students to 1,707, and staff report back from the national superintendents’ conference. The committee votes its recommendation for Article 8 of the 2024 Annual Town Meeting — $41,178,395, of which $33,345,870 is payroll and $6,832,525 operating, plus $600,000 for community school payroll — and discusses rewriting the discipline code so that specific violations carry specific consequences.

Feb. 20th, 2024 School Committee

The committee takes up the State Seal of Biliteracy, which Nantucket has opted into for the first time: students qualify by meeting graduation requirements, scoring 472 or better on the English MCAS, and reaching intermediate-high on an approved world language assessment. It is open to every student, not only those with a home language other than English, and the island’s Bulgarian language school has already begun assessing its students.

Feb. 6th, 2024 School Committee

The public budget presentation walks through what staff call the budget story: enrollment and spending from 2011 forward, a budget grown from $24 million eleven years ago to a projected $40 million, and an FY25 request of $41,175,395 — a $2.85 million increase over FY24, of which $400,000 is one-time. Chapter 70 aid covers only 17.5 percent of a state foundation budget of about $25 million, or $4.463 million, which is why the rest falls to the town.

Jan. 23rd, 2024 School Committee

Seniors earning the John and Abigail Adams Scholarship are announced — a merit award worth a tuition credit each semester at any Massachusetts state college, earned by scoring advanced on the MCAS. Principals then make their budget cases one by one; the elementary school asks only for its budget rolled forward with no additions, despite about 90 children already registered for kindergarten and a number that always grows.

Jan. 9th, 2024 School Committee

Enrollment is up eight students to 1,705, spread across all four schools, and the superintendent notes that late-winter upticks often follow the school-year calendar in Central and South America. Student awards are presented, and the town manager’s FY25 presentation sets out recommended town-wide expenses of $152.252 million and the frame the schools’ own request has to fit.

Dec. 5th, 2023 School Committee

Enrollment reaches 1,697 and the final draft calendar sets the December break from the 23rd through January 3. The FY24 technology report makes up the rest of the meeting: professional services raised to $175,000 to cover managed service agreements, and the hardware line raised to $200,000 to add third-grade Chromebooks to the cascade that moves devices up through the grades each year.

Nov. 28th, 2023 School Committee

Enrollment stands at 1,694, and staff report back from the state school committee and superintendents’ joint conference. The preliminary FY25 forecast comes later than usual this year, with payroll accounting for most of the projected increase, and the circuit breaker reimbursement for high-cost special education draws questions; the committee also hears about the new Civics MCAS.

Oct. 17th, 2023 School Committee

A first draft of the 2024-25 calendar comes up for discussion, and the December holidays falling mid-week turn out to be the hardest part to solve. The budget report shows 26 percent spent against 22 percent at the same point last year, $1.9 million ahead in total expenditures — driven almost entirely by out-of-district tuition, which has risen $1.5 million for the thirteen students currently placed outside Nantucket.

Oct. 3rd, 2023 School Committee

Enrollment drops eight students to 1,689 once the fifteen-day withdrawal notices have worked through — families who moved off-island over the summer are formally removed from the rosters, which makes this the first accurate count of the year. The rest of the meeting takes up donations, policy business and the schedule ahead.

Sep. 19th, 2023 School Committee

The superintendent calls it the smoothest start to a school year in some time, then turns to the 2023 MCAS and accountability results, which the state has released to districts under embargo ahead of the public presentation. Each principal walks through changes to their student handbook, among them smartwatches folded into the cell phone policy and a new e-bike policy at the middle school modeled on the high school’s.

Aug. 29th, 2023 School Committee

Three more administrators are introduced days before school opens, and enrollment is running a little over 1,700. The year-end FY23 budget report follows: an appropriation of $34,426,997, $1.55 million above the year before, with 79 percent of it spent on payroll, a new K–12 math curriculum at just over $98,000 — and, for the second year running, $75,000 to $80,000 lost to vandalism in the schools, money the finance director points out could have gone to maintenance or staff.

Jul. 18th, 2023 School Committee

The first meeting of the school year is largely a hiring report: four new administrators are welcomed — an intermediate school principal, a director of facilities and grounds, a special education coordinator and a director of English learners — with a humanities curriculum director still to be interviewed. No enrollment figure is available yet, because the student information system is still counting summer school.

Jun. 25th, 2025 School Committee

A meeting given over entirely to the draft cell phone policy, with speakers signed up in advance and held to three minutes each. The chief executive of a national phone-free schools coalition calls the district’s draft among the strongest she has seen, and parents and teachers follow with accounts of classroom disruption and of what changed at home, all supporting an away-for-the-day rule.

Jun. 17th, 2025 School Committee

The last meeting of the school year opens with a preschool teacher describing the second graders of the student council introducing a visiting author to the whole school, an account she says colleagues were in tears over. Facilities report that bids are going stale as contractors return with revised prices, and the committee reviews the draft cell phone policy, which would put phones away from the first bell to the last, and the pouch supplier the district would contract with.

Jun. 3rd, 2025 School Committee

The new chair’s first meeting. Enrollment is up one to 1,724 with new student registration closing that Friday, and a proposal comes forward to drop to one meeting a month over the summer. Special services present on post-secondary programs for students who may not go on to college, and the committee settles on a stopgap for the failing speaker system until the next capital budget.

May 20th, 2025 School Committee

Open positions rise from 17 to 20 after several non-renewals and a resignation, with about ten still to interview, though the superintendent notes the district is below the vacancy counts of recent years. The update covers out-of-district placements, which have stayed roughly flat, special education staffing and the contracts used for translation work, and a set of policy revisions introducing the child study team as the body that supports a student in crisis.

May 6th, 2025 School Committee

Enrollment rises by two to 1,723 and hiring season opens with 17 teaching positions to fill across the four schools. The committee hears about a legislative visit on bills awaiting action in the House and Senate, the difficulty of expanding vocational and technical capacity where enrollment is too small to justify another teacher, and policy IKAB on reporting student progress.

Apr. 15th, 2025 School Committee

The district submits its annual Student Opportunity Act update to the state, reporting on the two focus areas it chose the previous year: strengthening positive school environments and improving the multi-tiered system of support. With MCAS no longer the competency determination for graduation, the committee works through the local policy it is now required to adopt, including who decides whether a student receives an alternative diploma and the handful of students affected so far.

Apr. 1st, 2025 School Committee

Enrollment falls by 12 to 1,721 for reasons the superintendent cannot account for. Staggered start times, floated months earlier, are set aside in favor of improving transportation instead: QR-coded bus tags for registered students, a route study to consolidate stops, and more visible advertising by the Collaborative. MCAS season opens with the fifth and tenth grades, and the wellness committee reports on its year.

Mar. 18th, 2025 School Committee

The superintendent reports from the national superintendents’ conference in New Orleans, where the theme was future-driven leadership and the sessions ran to artificial intelligence, school safety and data-driven decision making. The meeting then turns to the Cape Cod Collaborative’s articles of agreement, and to a data presentation setting MAP growth percentiles alongside MCAS and tracking students who are not passing the state test, not exiting English learner status, and not meeting the next year’s benchmarks.

Mar. 4th, 2025 School Committee

Enrollment edges up to 1,733. The high school walks the committee through its program of study and scheduling timeline, including the presentation every senior makes to an advisory group on their path through high school against the Vision of a Graduate. The public school appropriation is recommended at $43.467 million — $35.762 million payroll and $7.384 million operating — and the policy subcommittee brings forward language changes.

Feb. 4th, 2025 School Committee

A school nurse tells the committee that covering 965 students with a single nurse is not safe practice, that the number of medically fragile students has risen sharply over seven years, and that state rules require a registered nurse in each building for some medications. The second-quarter budget update follows, including the separate treatment of medical insurance and a heating oil line that had to be revised upward, along with transfers to fund an agricultural position and the middle school student council.

Jan. 21st, 2025 School Committee

A high school junior uses public comment to describe how he and his teammates were treated by their head coach during the football season, distinguishing hard coaching done respectfully from what he experienced. The committee then hears high school enrollment and kindergarten registration figures, and a presentation on the district’s instructional vision and how it feeds the budget process, with MCAS as the central measure.

Jan. 7th, 2025 School Committee

A parent tells the committee the elementary school has had no teacher certified in Orton-Gillingham or Wilson reading instruction since the schools split more than seven years ago, and objects to the larger class sizes now being proposed. The superintendent reports on drafting the local policy that must replace MCAS as a competency determination, starting from 2025 and working backwards, and on how staggered start times would interact with existing contracts.

Dec. 17th, 2024 School Committee

Public comment compares Nantucket High School’s AP science results in 2011 and 2012 with those of 2024. The superintendent gives an update on November’s ballot question, which ended MCAS as the competency determination for graduation without ending the testing itself, and on the confusion that has followed about what replaces it. A presentation on the high school culinary arts program and a note on special education funding tied to enrollment round out the meeting.

Dec. 3rd, 2024 School Committee

Enrollment slips by two to 1,733. The draft 2025-26 school calendar comes forward with the teachers association’s approval, its professional development days marked out, and the English Learner Parent Advisory Council reports on its work and on the difficulty of getting parents to meetings. The committee also notes a new policy for responding to the loss of a student or staff member.

Nov. 12th, 2024 School Committee

The calendar update is struck from the agenda pending discussion with the teachers association. Public comment returns to the math results raised in September, and to the absence of questions from the committee about them. The chief financial officer then gives a preliminary FY26 forecast of close to $43 million, with professional development and software licensing among the costs driving the increase.

Oct. 15th, 2024 School Committee

Public comment takes apart the 2024 MCAS results: the high school beat statewide figures in all three subjects for the first time since the science test was added in 2008 — 55 percent meeting or exceeding in science against 49 statewide, 50 in math against 48, 68 in English against 57 — while results at the intermediate and middle schools were poor, with only 1 percent of grades 3 to 8 exceeding expectations in math for the second year running. The committee also covers safety and security, a vacancy it must recommend on to the Select Board, and student AP course loads.

Oct. 1st, 2024 School Committee

Public comment is a membership appeal from the parent teacher organization, which has funded classroom supplies and student scholarships for 44 years and will hold its meeting with Portuguese and Spanish translators. Enrollment stands at 1,722, down nine from September. The committee reviews e-bike safety classes and the parent-signed contracts that go with them, and handbook changes that rename the cell phone policy “mobile technology” to cover smartwatches, earbuds and tablets.

Sep. 3rd, 2024 School Committee

A long public comment argues the district does too little for its strongest students, citing the abolished middle school honor roll, Algebra 1 dropped from the CPS curriculum, and a math reform that collapsed after three years — alongside MCAS figures showing 19 percent of Nantucket seventh graders and 16 percent of eighth graders meeting math expectations against 38 percent statewide. The committee then takes up enrollment and the intermediate school bubble working its way through the grades, calendar changes, and the school handbooks, where the absence policy has been clarified.

Aug. 20th, 2024 School Committee

Hiring dominates the update: 32 of 33 open teaching positions are filled, leaving the district all but fully staffed for the first time in more than three years, helped by a new onboarding platform shared with town HR. The end-of-year FY24 budget report follows, covering an operating budget spent in full, a tuition line raised for FY25, benefits extended to community school employees, and the higher cost of almost everything the district orders.

Jun. 16th, 2026 School Committee

The last regular meeting of the school year opens on end-of-year business: 152 graduates crossed the stage, with pre-K, kindergarten, fifth grade and eighth grade ceremonies still to come before classes end on June 23. Hiring stands at 13 of 23 open positions filled, with six still vacant in ESL, science, special education and high school nursing. The technology department reviews the year’s infrastructure work and the return to Google Classroom, and a proposed limit on student screen time is tabled for further study.

Jun. 2nd, 2026 School Committee

Enrollment reaches 1,680 with a kindergarten class of about 120 expected in the fall, and the district is down to one large-bus and one small-bus driver running double routes where four or five buses are needed. The update covers MCAS and alternate assessment participation, the Seal of Biliteracy, the English Learner Parent Advisory Council and the translation of district documents, and an ESL curriculum overhaul being done with an outside consultant. The student representative gives her final report.

May 19th, 2026 School Committee

Enrollment climbs by 14 to 1,677, almost all of it at the elementary school, while hiring season leaves 19 teaching positions and one administrative post open, with speech-language pathology, behavior analysis and school psychology roles being contracted out in the meantime. The committee reviews a year-end financial picture of roughly $62.9 million across the operating budget, grants, lunch and the athletic and other revolvers, completes its own self-evaluation, and votes to remove policies that no longer apply.

Apr. 14th, 2026 School Committee

Enrollment rises by nine to 1,663, and Nourish Nantucket presents on island food security — one in three islanders and roughly half of public school students — along with a school collaboration for the committee to approve. A legislative briefing warns that budgets will tighten sharply over the next few fiscal years, the chief financial officer gives the third-quarter update, and the committee votes on school choice for 2026-2027, a meal modifications policy, and a high school field trip to Iceland.

Mar. 24th, 2026 School Committee

MCAS testing is under way — 125 fifth graders and more than 130 tenth graders sat day one of the English language arts test, with delayed starts for other grades to keep the testing environment quiet. The superintendent reminds families that the test is still required even though it is no longer a graduation requirement, and that scoring in the top quarter of the district earns the John and Abigail Adams Scholarship and its in-state tuition. A presentation on central registration follows the pipeline from registration to enrollment.

Mar. 10th, 2026 School Committee

The committee’s first hybrid meeting, with enrollment holding at 1,654 against a statewide decline the commissioner has flagged. The superintendent reports from the national superintendents’ conference and its five guiding principles for redesigning public education, the state issues a warning chart projecting possible reductions, and teacher contract negotiations are described as productive.

Mar. 3rd, 2026 School Committee (Special Meeting)

A public hearing on the fiscal 2027 budget. The teachers association opens public comment on the state funding formula, the Student Opportunity Act and the Fair Share amendment, and a coalition letter urging the governor to direct the Fair Share surplus to school districts. The presentation that follows covers the foundation budget, the governor’s level-two figure and its bare-minimum increase, and an operating share that has drifted from the optimal 80/20 split to 83/17.

Feb. 10th, 2026 School Committee

Enrollment slips by five to 1,654, and transportation again takes much of the update: a 7D vehicle now runs Madaket students in the morning and special education drop-offs in the afternoon, a second special education run is being worked out, and students arriving outside contracted staff hours are creating a supervision problem. The committee reviews how the phone pouch policy has held up since January and turns to FY27 budget development, where the Community School asked the town for $750,000 and was level funded at $600,000.

Jan. 20th, 2026 School Committee

Enrollment rises by four to 1,659, and a 7D van joins the Cape Cod Collaborative fleet — one driver, one monitor and seven seats, with licensing requirements far lighter than the commercial license a full school bus demands — running Madaket pickups in the morning and special education drop-offs in the afternoon, with a second van being sought. The Town of Nantucket then presents its FY27 budget: an overall increase of 5.48 percent, the charter timeline that produced it, $1.9 million flowing into the operating budget, a proposed additional building inspector, and one-time costs funded from free cash rather than the operating budget.

Jan. 8th, 2026 School Committee Negotiations

A short meeting of the Negotiation Subcommittee, which convenes and immediately votes to enter executive session for a collective bargaining session with the teachers association, not to return to open session.

Dec. 22nd, 2025 School Committee

A short meeting of the Negotiation Subcommittee, which convenes and immediately votes to enter executive session to prepare strategy for bargaining with the teachers association, not to return to open session.

Dec. 16th, 2025 School Committee

Public comment opens on accessibility at the stadium, including a senior describing the lengths her father, who uses a wheelchair, has to go to in order to watch her cheer. The committee recognizes three students for their coursework, reviews the school calendar, and returns to possible revisions to the stadium project — where, as one member notes, every month of further debate adds to the cost.

Dec. 8th, 2025 School Committee

Thirty minutes of public comment go almost entirely to the playing surface question, with speakers citing PFAS research and asking the committee to return to its original plan. Enrollment falls by five to 1,655, the district faces a state-required data collection policy due by the end of the month, and construction is estimated at a year or more.

Nov. 17th, 2025 School Committee

The meeting opens by marking the death of the Nantucket Teachers Association president, an English teacher and long-standing advocate for the schools, with the association’s vice president stepping up to serve out her term. Public comment returns to the athletic facilities, with speakers urging a return to the 2022 plan drawn up by coaches, parents and administrators. The committee also takes a proposal for new dugouts and weighs the maintenance costs that come with donated facilities against an already restricted budget.

Nov. 6th, 2025 Public Info Session: School Facilities

A workshop session on the stadium renovation, with no votes taken and half an hour set aside for public comment. Speakers and committee members work through synthetic turf maintenance and grooming, heat-safety limits on playing surfaces of the kind Burlington has adopted, and a grounds budget of $48,000 a year that several call far too low. The cost is put at upwards of $23 million and the path through finance committee and town meeting at two to three years.

Oct. 8th, 2025 School Committee

Most of the thirty minutes allotted for public comment goes to the approved athletic facilities plan, as coaches, parents and four student athletes argue that an asphalt track is unsafe and cannot be run in spikes, that one grass field cannot carry three seasons of teams, and that turf deserves another look now that PFAS-free surfaces exist; several ask for a campus-wide master plan committee before the proposal reaches town meeting. The superintendent reports enrollment down eight to 1,662 — the October figure the state holds the district to all year — new e-bike registration and helmet rules effective October 15, and 2025 MCAS growth up six points in English and seven in math. Also on the agenda: a protocol for vetting guest speakers, the annual homeschooling report, a two-year state suicide prevention grant, and AP results showing 142 students sat 265 exams with 74 percent scoring three or higher.

Sep. 22nd, 2025 School Committee

A sharp rise in e-bike use on campus dominates the superintendent’s update: at least three accidents have sent students to hospital, and bikes must now be walked on school grounds and parked more than ten feet from any building. The committee then hears the athletic complex renovation proposal and votes to move it on to the finance committee, and reviews mounting pressure on the operating side of a budget that ran 83 percent payroll to 17 percent operating in FY26.

Sep. 2nd, 2025 School Committee

The first meeting of the school year opens with a parent’s public comment about a child moving up to the middle school and losing the staff who had supported him. The superintendent reports on artificial intelligence policy training for educators, the bus transportation situation, and new e-bike rules requiring students and parents to sign a contract and complete a safety course each year, and notes a decrease in enrollment driven by a smaller sixth-grade class.

Jul. 22nd, 2025 School Committee

District leaders report back from the state executive institute for district leaders and from a national federal education policy briefing that warns of coming cuts to federal funding, including English learner programs. The committee hears about MCAS data analysis, literacy and math coaches contracted from Boston Public Schools, and votes on a donation from the Nantucket Education Trust.

Oct. 6th, 2026 School Committee

Enrollment for October comes in at 1,604 students, six fewer than September and the number that will carry through the year for state funding; the decline runs across the Cape and the state, and is put down largely to the cost of living. A homeschooling report counts 21 students in 13 families, seven more than last year though still a lower rate than most Cape and Islands districts. Advanced Placement results follow: 144 students sat 279 exams, averaging 3.01, with 69 percent scoring three or higher. The longest discussion is the state’s new graduation requirements, which follow the ballot question that removed MCAS as the competency determination and oblige the district to adopt MassCore — adding Algebra 2, two years of one world language and an arts credit — with a policy vote needed by December for next year’s ninth graders, and separate provision for students on education plans and for English learners.

Sep. 15th, 2026 School Committee

Public comment presses the committee on reading: only 28 percent of students in the tested grades read at or above grade level, and the speaker argues that should outrank the playing field and athletics on the agenda. The superintendent reports on enrollment amid the usual September movement and a statewide population decline, and on transportation, where a signed contract and lease agreements with a new bus company are expected within weeks. The chief financial officer closes with the fourth-quarter budget update and the practice of cutting programs that fall below minimum enrollment.

Sep. 1st, 2026 School Committee

The first meeting of the school year, with the enrollment report held to September 15 because the numbers stay in flux until students actually appear. Transportation is still in crisis a week before the September 8 opening, though the Nantucket Regional Transit Authority has agreed to two or three route deviations for grades 7 through 12 while bus contracts are finished and an on-demand service is readied. The committee reviews the four-year District Improvement Plan, handbook updates covering attendance, helmets and the two-mile bus radius, and votes to adopt a policy on interacting with law enforcement engaged in civil immigration enforcement.

Aug. 25th, 2026 School Committee

Public comment opens with the Nantucket Land & Water Council asking the committee to schedule a discussion of groundwater monitoring at the stadium site, and proposing three wells — two downgradient, one upgradient — sampled twice a year to establish baseline conditions before construction. The committee votes on a policy narrowing bus transportation eligibility, acknowledging it will add traffic at arrival and dismissal now that the Cape Cod Collaborative has reached the limit of what it can provide, and hears where the bus bids stand. MCAS results are expected at the end of September, and the superintendent’s contract returns after two summer meetings.

Episode 1, Dec. 7th, 2023

The first episode, reporting from a downtown just past the 49th annual Christmas Stroll, with trees along Main Street decorated by public school students and the school’s a cappella groups caroling for the crowds. A holiday dessert cabaret is coming, and winter sports open their season after a week of tryouts.

Episode 2, Dec. 14th, 2023

December Delight raised more than $50,000 for the class of 2024 graduation fund, with local vendors selling alongside the seniors. New electronic hall passes arrive to mixed reviews, intended to cut down time spent out of class, and swim and dive open under a new coach with a 61–49 win over Barnstable.

Episode 3, Dec. 21st, 2023

The holiday special, handed over to a showcase of classmates’ talents: a guitarist playing a tune from SpongeBob, an Adele cover from a singer who has just been selected for the Cape and Islands Music Festival, an original song, dance routines, basketball tricks from a freshman worth watching, and the book club drawing its summer reading raffle for gift certificates to island shops. Around it, a senior has won the Daughters of the American Revolution Good Citizenship Award for service, dependability and leadership, and the yearbook staff warn that anyone who has not turned in a senior photo is about to become a blank space. Word on the Street asks students where they are headed over the break — Georgia, Miami, California, or nowhere at all — and what they mean to do differently in the new year.

Episode 4, Jan. 11th, 2024

Back from the winter break with quarter two closing at the end of the month. NCTV is recruiting for two programs open to students — Teen View, where they can write, direct or act in a film of their own, and a sports camera class filming and commentating Whaler games alongside the lead videographer — and the island food pantry is looking for volunteers.

Episode 5, Jan. 18th, 2024

Student-led conferences are set for the following week. The sports desk has boys basketball beating Martha’s Vineyard 67–50 at TD Garden and the girls’ swim team still undefeated after a win over Mashpee, and the arts segment names the winners of the school’s Poetry Out Loud competition.

Episode 6, Jan. 25th, 2024

Two pieces of island news for students who need them: the NRTA Wave buses are now free to ride, and the warming houses opened over the weekend’s cold snap with breakfast and dinner provided. National Honor Society members are offering free tutoring, and boys hockey shut out Bishop Stang 5–0 to take a statewide team-of-the-weekend award.

Episode 7, Feb. 1st, 2024

Quarter three begins, and the anchors stop to walk through something the whole school has been confused about: how to actually create one of the new electronic hall passes, step by step, from logging in to getting a teacher’s approval.

Episode 8, Feb. 8th, 2024

The nursing class has open seats, and an explainer covers what Mardi Gras is and where it came from. The episode’s feature is a warm send-off for a student finishing his last week at the school, interviewed with his teacher about what he loved about the place and what comes next.

Episode 9, Feb. 15th, 2024

A snow day and a half day in one week, with Presidents’ Day still to come. Student council has organized a spirit week with a theme for each day, and several students spent three days rehearsing for the Cape and Islands Music Festival concert at Barnstable High School.

Episode 10, Feb. 22nd, 2024

The last day of spirit week, and the show announces it is going off air for a couple of weeks over the February break. The swim team dominated the Division 2 state meet over the weekend, and the library has new titles in for anyone facing a long flight.

Episode 11, Mar. 14th, 2024

Course selection opens and the spring musical goes up this weekend. A student placed third at the Massachusetts state Poetry Out Loud finals, held at the Old South Meeting House in Boston against competitors from across the state, and the Dreamland is bringing Shakespeare & Company to the school for the ninth grade. The ending is abrupt: the recording was cut short by technical difficulties.

Episode 12, Mar. 21st, 2024

A Cyrus Peirce eighth grader is running a clothing drive through Project 351 for an organization that distributes clothing to children in need, with a collection box in the middle school lobby. The cast and crew of Pippin are congratulated, and registration opens for the fifth annual Litter Derby.

Episode 13, Apr. 4th, 2024

Quarter three ends and spring sports open with both lacrosse teams routing Martha’s Vineyard, 17–1 and 16–1. The bulletin is unusually full of things happening off campus: an airport drill students have to arrange their own ride to, college tours to Providence for sophomores and for juniors and seniors, and a follow-up on the eighth grader featured the week before, whose clothing drive has now collected more than 200 bags. The Book Festival’s essay competition returns with a larger prize and a prompt drawn from this year’s visiting author — name a real-world problem and imagine where it leads if nobody addresses it — and Word on the Street asks students what they would name a yacht and what actually gets them out of bed. The episode closes with outtakes.

Episode 14, Apr. 11th, 2024

Quarter four begins and report cards go out. Monday’s solar eclipse reached 87 percent on Nantucket, short of totality — the last was 2017 and the next is 2044 — and the show airs the trailer for a student-made documentary due to premiere in May.

Episode 15, Apr. 25th, 2024

Back from April break, with a last call for NCTV’s free sports broadcasting and camera class — anyone under 18 who signs up gets a year’s membership, equipment checkouts and use of the editing software — and the Egan Maritime Institute offering a five-day sailing trip around New England aboard a tall ship. The Youth Climate Committee is taking submissions for an environmental art show on nature, climate change and Earth Day, the Litter Derby still needs teams, and both lacrosse teams keep rolling through the spring season. Word on the Street becomes a teacher interview: what he cannot live without, the year he counts as the best of his life, and what twenty-five years of driving a cab on the island taught him about people who will not use their directional signals. A new fashion segment also makes its debut.

Episode 16, May 2nd, 2024

Prom tickets go on sale at $40 each, with a mandatory meeting for the parents and guardians of any student planning to attend the junior prom or senior ball — attendance required before a student can go. Last call for Litter Derby signups, and an Arbor Day report on five oak saplings and a few hazelnut bushes newly in the ground.

Episode 17, May 9th, 2024

The episode marks both Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month and Mental Health Awareness Month, with the anchors pointing students toward the school’s counselors and Fairwinds and acknowledging how heavy the final stretch of the year can feel. AP exams continue through the following week.

Episode 18, May 16th, 2024

Math MCAS is next week and biology follows in June, with teachers offering after-school tutoring for both. The larger news is a near-peer mentoring program starting in September that will pair high school volunteers with intermediate school students — the first Big Brothers Big Sisters program of its kind on the east coast.

Episode 19, May 23rd, 2024

Congratulations to the Golf Club scholarship finalists and winners, and to the sophomores who have finished math MCAS. Guidance is asking seniors to bring their Naviance records up to date with every result and the school they have committed to, and the episode closes with a musical number from the crew.

Episode 20, May 30th, 2024

Yearbooks are about to arrive and prom photographs are posted. The episode gives its time to a memorial scholarship fundraiser being held in the community that weekend — live music, food trucks, a raffle and a charity ride — and asks for student volunteers, with community service hours offered.

Finale, Jun. 6th, 2024

The sign-off for the show’s first year, handed over to the crew: thanks to the audience, a farewell to the graduating seniors who anchored and produced it, musical performances, and a cheerfully chaotic segment baking sugar cookies with a group of small children.

Episode 1, Oct. 23rd, 2024

Season two opens with a new crew and new equipment. Halloween fills the island calendar — the Coast Guard haunted house, collecting canned goods at the door, and a pet-friendly trick-or-treat downtown — and tickets go on sale for the football team’s Island Cup against Martha’s Vineyard at Fenway Park in November. Fall sports records are read out with field hockey at 11–2.

Episode 2, Oct. 30th, 2024

Halloween parade day, with judging downtown that afternoon. The anchors remind eligible students that early voting is open and that Election Day polling is in the high school lobby itself, and note that the Wave buses stay free for the rest of the season. Debate Club is meeting weekly, and the Spanish and diversity clubs are selling holiday goods to fund a trip to the Museum of Fine Arts.

Episode 3, Nov. 7th, 2024

Seniors are told to mark December Delight on their calendars as the class’s biggest fundraiser of the year, paying for yearbooks, the ball and everything else graduation requires. Clubs are recruiting, yearbook forms are due, and the anchors make a good-humored case for actually putting phones in the classroom caddy.

Episode 4, Nov. 14th, 2024

The Harvey Foundation’s tenth Run for Robin is coming to the ‘Sconset Casino, a 5K with a cookout afterwards and a discount code for students; its proceeds fund free athletic gear, books and meals for island students. The Atlantic White Shark Conservancy is visiting during advisory for a shark talk open to everyone.

Episode 5, Nov. 21st, 2024

Last call for the Run for Robin that Sunday, and for Island Cup tickets before the football team plays at Fenway Park the following Tuesday. Driver’s education sessions are announced for the new year, with registration opening in December.

Episode 6, Dec. 5th, 2024

President Biden spent Thanksgiving on the island for the last time as president, filling the streets with Secret Service and extra security while the tree lighting went ahead as a well-attended success. December Delight is a week away, the Harvey Foundation is taking shoe sizes for its free gear program, and shotgun deer season has opened.

Episode 7, Dec. 12th, 2024

December Delight is this Saturday and the senior class is selling scarves alongside the local vendors. National Honor Society members are selling candy grams through advisory, and the show puts out a call for student acts to feature in its holiday special.

Episode 8, Dec. 19th, 2024

The last episode before the break, given over to a talent showcase after only a few students submitted: back flips, lightning mental arithmetic, and an accordion. The anchors also take up the mystery drones reported across Massachusetts that autumn, one of them said to have come down at the island airport.

Episode 9, Jan. 16th, 2025

Back for the second semester, and the National Honor Society food drive begins — every advisory collecting for the island food pantry, with a prize for whichever brings in the most by weight. A student chapter of a cancer charity is holding a bake sale at that night’s basketball game, and the Winter Tide art show opens.

Episode 10, Jan. 23rd, 2025

Two things at the Dreamland: a free community screening of a documentary on the island cold case of Margaret Kilcoyne’s disappearance, and congratulations to the cast of Newsies, back from the Junior Theater Festival in Atlanta with an award for ensemble work. Teen skate returns to the rink on Saturday nights.

Episode 11, Feb. 6th, 2025

Technical difficulties take out the usual production, so the anchors read what they have from the desk and the episode turns into a question put to students and teachers around the school: would you rather restart your life at ten knowing everything you know now, or skip to forty-five with fifty million dollars? The answers, and the reasoning behind them, make up the rest of the show.

Episode 12, Feb. 13th, 2025

Valentine’s candy grams are on sale through advisory, and there is a spaghetti dinner in the cafeteria that evening raising money for the students traveling to Europe over spring break. A photography club is just getting started, and seniors are pointed at two Cape Cod scholarship funds still open.

Episode 13, Mar. 13th, 2025

Back on air after a few weeks away. Signups open for the Litter Derby, the island-wide competition to collect the most trash over a weekend for a $1,000 prize, and a 3-on-3 basketball tournament at the Boys and Girls Club is being co-hosted with the Harvey Foundation, with community service hours on offer for volunteers.

Episode 14, Mar. 20th, 2025

A new class president is congratulated, and MCAS testing next week means a delayed start for everyone who is not sitting it, with an AP mock exam in the cafeteria besides. The 3-on-3 tournament drew a good turnout, Litter Derby signups stay open, and the senior countdown is down to 49 school days.

Episode 15, Mar. 27th, 2025

The sophomore class has finished MCAS for good. A teacher’s March Madness bracket is running in the advisory announcements — books rather than basketball, voting down to the final four — and with 44 days left for seniors the anchors push scholarship deadlines and remind anyone struggling to talk to a counselor.

Episode 16, Apr. 3rd, 2025

Two new anchors take the desk. Quarter three closes the following week, the Litter Derby is finally this weekend, and a mental health club for student athletes moves its meetings into the last ten minutes of advisory to make them easier to get to.

Episode 17, Apr. 10th, 2025

The Litter Derby drew a strong turnout of students cleaning up the island over the weekend. The hospital is running vaccine clinics on Saturday, seniors have a form from the office covering the ball and graduation, and the countdown stands at 35 school days.

Episode 18, May 15th, 2025

Quarter four midterm grades are due. The drama club needs backstage crew for its production of All in the Timing, and every grade is eligible for the Book Foundation’s Young Writers Award, a $1,000 essay prize tied to the school’s visiting author program. Lifeguard certification is also on offer.

Episode 19, May 22nd, 2025

Auditions for next year’s anchors were held during advisory, with another session promised in the fall for anyone who missed them. The drama club performs All in the Timing this weekend at $5 a ticket, and seniors are working through graduation ticket forms and Naviance records.

Finale, May 29th, 2025

The season two sign-off opens with a farewell song and gives most of its time to the segment worth saving for last: the crew stopping seniors around the school to ask where they are headed after graduation, and which classmate they will miss most. The answers range across four-year colleges in half a dozen states and, just as often, trade school, plumbing, nursing, an electrician’s program and a captain’s license. In between, the sailing team’s junior crew takes home its first trophy at the 25th Crawford Cup, both lacrosse teams close their regular seasons with wins over the Vineyard on the way to the playoffs, and the Artists Association puts out a call for teenage interns to help teach its summer art camp for younger children.

Episode 1, Oct. 10th, 2025

Season three opens with homecoming week ahead and a full rundown of the new e-bike rules: park out back along First Way, helmets required anywhere on school grounds, and no charging batteries on campus. The All Cape College Fair is coming up with representatives from more than a hundred colleges, trade schools and military branches, and two visiting authors presented their newest work at an all-school assembly.

Episode 2, Oct. 17th, 2025

Homecoming is a week away, and the episode lays out the whole of it: a pep rally on the football field, a bonfire, and a pig roast at $20 for pork, two sides, dessert and a drink, with the booster shack open early for burgers. Each day of spirit week gets a theme, ending on Whaler Pride.

Episode 3, Oct. 23rd, 2025

Homecoming lands this Saturday in the school cafeteria, with the court announced and voting open — the king and queen to be crowned at halftime of the football game. The pep rally and pig roast are tomorrow night, and the anchors wish the athletes luck across a heavy weekend of games.

Episode 4, Oct. 30th, 2025

The Island Cup has been canceled: Martha’s Vineyard could not field a team, ending a tradition the anchors call beloved, though the football team is still headed for the state playoffs. Homecoming royalty are congratulated, and the booster club launches a new tradition called Teacher of Impact, letting athletes name a teacher who mattered to them.

Episode 5, Nov. 20th, 2025

Signups close tomorrow for the school’s Poetry Out Loud competition, whose winners go on to regionals. December Delight is set for the middle of the month, and Friends of Nantucket Public Schools is looking for student volunteers to help with the holiday house tour over Christmas Stroll weekend.

Episode 6, Dec. 4th, 2025

A Project 351 ambassador who is also the freshman class president is running a food drive for the island food pantry and for aid to Jamaica, with a prize for the advisory that brings in the most. December Delight planning is underway, and the holiday house tour still needs volunteers to greet guests and guide visitors through the houses and churches.

Episode 7, Dec. 11th, 2025

The Book Festival’s Young Writers Award is open to every grade for a $1,000 scholarship, with a January deadline. Winter driver’s education registration has opened, December Delight is this Saturday, and teen skate is back at the rink on Fridays with free skating and free pizza.

Episode 8, Dec. 18th, 2025

The school is planning a trip to Iceland over the April vacation in 2027, with two information meetings set for after the winter break. Spirit week runs through the last two days before the holidays, and the Young Writers Award deadline is still ahead.

Episode 9, Jan. 15th, 2026

The Winter Tide art show opens in the cafeteria that evening with work from across the school. The first Iceland trip meeting is a week away, and the anchors flag the meditation club, which meets on Mondays for students and again for staff.

Episode 10, Jan. 22nd, 2026

Island actors are back from the Junior Theater Festival in Atlanta with an excellence in acting award for their production of The Drowsy Chaperone. The tenth annual Winter Tide art show is called a success, with credit to the rock band, the a cappella groups and the art, wood shop and culinary students, and a band and chorus concert follows that night.

Episode 11, Feb. 5th, 2026

For Black History Month, a state poet laureate is speaking at the African Meeting House alongside island artists, one of them a student at the school. Seniors have two graduation surveys waiting in their email, and the anchors weigh Punxsutawney Phil’s six more weeks of winter against the island’s own groundhog, who is calling an early spring.

Episode 12, Feb. 12th, 2026

A spaghetti dinner in the cafeteria that evening raises money to send students to the Galápagos over April break — $15 for a full plate, with takeout and delivery. A student has advanced from the regional round of Poetry Out Loud to the state competition after traveling to Boston.

Episode 13, Feb. 19th, 2026

Two clubs get the floor: a mental health group for student athletes meeting monthly, and an American Sign Language club for anyone wanting to learn basic signing or more about Deaf culture. Course request presentations have begun for underclassmen, and driver’s education registration has opened again.

Episode 14, Mar. 12th, 2026

The spring musical Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat goes up this week. MCAS arrives later in the month with delayed starts for everyone not sitting it, and the lead videographer for local Whaler sports coverage is running a workshop on operating a professional video camera for students who want to join the crew.

Episode 15, Mar. 19th, 2026

Veritas, the high school newspaper, has moved to a website of its own and is recruiting staff. MCAS is next week, the camera workshop holds its final session of the year, and the anchors run through several new classes being introduced at the school.

Episode 16, Apr. 2nd, 2026

Registration for the Iceland trip is live and parents need to complete it. The environmental club is running a printmaking workshop with the Artists Association making prints of Nantucket’s native plants and animals, to be hung around the school and the island, and anyone is welcome whether they consider themselves an artist or not.

Episode 17, Apr. 8th, 2026

Applications for next year’s school-to-career internships are due to guidance by the first of May, and the Litter Derby is this weekend. Seniors are picking the class song that will play at the clap-out, and the sports desk has both lacrosse teams unbeaten to start the season, with the girls’ captain named athlete of the week after fifteen goals in the opening week.

Episode 18, Apr. 16th, 2026

The Education Trust is offering sophomores a free trip to tour a Massachusetts college, with permission slips at the guidance office. The Galápagos trip leaves today, a pre-prom and senior ball meeting is set for the end of the month, and internship applications remain open.

Episode 19, May 7th, 2026

Town meeting this week approved the Our Island Home budget and the turf fields, with the final decision going to the ballot — and the anchors use it to tell any student old enough to register that they should. The art club is painting murals at the food pantry’s new location, the film festival and the Atheneum are running a digital storytelling workshop in June, and girls lacrosse sits at 9–2 after a senior scored her hundredth goal.

Episode 20, May 13th, 2026

Prom is this weekend. Free weekly sign language lessons are starting for beginners, student volunteers are wanted for a spring festival at the end of the month, and the sports desk covers girls lacrosse celebrating seven seniors after a 10–7 win and boys lacrosse climbing to the second seed in the state power rankings at 12–2.

Episode 21, May 21st, 2026

The Young Writers Award results are in: a $1,000 prize to the overall winner and $500 to each of four finalists, all graduating seniors, alongside a book foundation scholarship of $2,000. The National Honor Society is running a food drive with a box in every advisory, and seniors are told to check their email for any outstanding balance before the end of the year.

Finale, Jun. 1st, 2026

The last episode of season three opens with the crew singing a farewell number, then works through a bulletin thick with end-of-year business: yearbooks arriving at senior breakfast, class officer elections once the seniors have gone, a teacher assembling a community band to play at the downtown memorial on the Fourth of July, and a blunt warning that unpaid balances will hold back caps, gowns and graduation tickets. The sports desk has almost every team in the postseason — girls lacrosse into the Sweet 16 after a 17–4 win, boys lacrosse seeded second at 15–3, baseball, both tennis teams and sailing all still alive, and softball closing its season with a 28–7 win over the Vineyard. Word on the Street signs off for good with a prank: a petition the crew asks people to sign, which unfolds to reveal an old school photograph of whoever has just signed it.

Episode 1, Oct. 2nd, 2026

Season four opens with places left on an April vacation trip to Iceland, assessment dates for the Seal of Biliteracy, a late call for student artwork for the homecoming t-shirts, college representatives visiting through the fall, and a November deadline for senior yearbook photos. Picture day is a week away with online pre-ordering open, Veritas is recruiting photographers and writers, and the pep band and drum line want members for the three remaining home football games. The sports desk finds the fall season well underway: golf past Cape Cod Academy, volleyball on a third straight sweep at 4–2, boys soccer 4–1 and third in the state power rankings, girls soccer 2–3, football 1–1, field hockey 1–3–2, and boys cross country still undefeated. A weather forecast, a roundup of volunteer openings toward the twenty hours needed to graduate, and a trivia question follow, and Word on the Street asks students their dream job.

Class of 2013

Class of 2014

Class of 2015

Class of 2016

Class of 2017

Class of 2018

Class of 2019

Class of 2020

Class of 2021

Class of 2022

Class of 2023

Class of 2024

Class of 2025

Class of 2026

Senior Awards 2026

Sep. 22nd, 2021

Sep. 23rd, 2021

Sep. 24th, 2021

Sep. 27th, 2021

Sep. 28th, 2021

Sep. 29th, 2021

Sep. 30th, 2021

Oct. 1st, 2021

Oct. 4th, 2021

Oct. 5th, 2021

Oct. 6th, 2021

Oct. 7th, 2021

Oct. 12th, 2021

Oct. 13th, 2021

Oct. 14th, 2021

Oct. 15th, 2021

Oct. 18th, 2021

Oct. 19th, 2021

Oct. 20th, 2021

Oct. 21st, 2021

Oct. 22nd, 2021

Oct. 25th, 2021

Oct. 26th, 2021

Oct. 28th, 2021

Oct. 29th, 2021

Nov. 1st, 2021

Nov. 3rd, 2021

Nov. 4th, 2021

Nov. 5th, 2021

Nov. 8th, 2021

Nov. 9th, 2021

Nov. 10th, 2021

Nov. 12th, 2021

Nov. 15th, 2021

Nov. 16th, 2021

Nov. 17th, 2021

Nov. 18th, 2021

Nov. 22nd, 2021

Nov. 23rd, 2021

Nov. 29th, 2021

Nov. 30th, 2021

Dec. 1st, 2021

Dec. 2nd, 2021

Dec. 3rd, 2021

Dec. 6th, 2021

Dec. 7th, 2021

Dec. 8th, 2021

Dec. 9th, 2021

Dec. 10th, 2021

Dec. 13th, 2021

Dec. 14th, 2021

Dec. 15th, 2021

Dec. 16th, 2021

Dec. 17th, 2021

Dec. 20th, 2021

Dec. 21st, 2021

Dec. 22nd, 2021

Jan. 3rd, 2022

Jan. 4th, 2022

Jan. 5th, 2022

Jan. 6th, 2022

Jan. 7th, 2022

Jan. 10th, 2022

Jan. 11th, 2022

Jan. 12th, 2022

Jan. 13th, 2022

Jan. 14th, 2022

Jan. 18th, 2022

Jan. 19th, 2022

Jan. 20th, 2022

Jan. 21st, 2022

Jan. 24th, 2022

Jan. 25th, 2022

Jan. 26th, 2022

Jan. 27th, 2022

Jan. 28th, 2022

Jan. 31st, 2022

Feb. 1st, 2022

Feb. 3rd, 2022

Feb. 4th, 2022

Feb. 7th, 2022

Feb. 8th, 2022

Feb. 9th, 2022

Feb. 10th, 2022

Feb. 11th, 2022

Feb. 14th, 2022

Feb. 15th, 2022

Feb. 16th, 2022

Feb. 17th, 2022

Feb. 18th, 2022

Feb. 22nd, 2022

Feb. 23rd, 2022

Feb. 24th, 2022

Feb. 25th, 2022

Mar. 7th, 2022

Mar. 8th, 2022

Mar. 9th, 2022

Mar. 10th, 2022

Mar. 11th, 2022

Mar. 15th, 2022

Mar. 16th, 2022

Mar. 17th, 2022

Mar. 18th, 2022

Mar. 22nd, 2022

Mar. 23rd, 2022

Mar. 24th, 2022

Mar. 25th, 2022

Mar. 28th, 2022

Mar. 29th, 2022

Mar. 30th, 2022

Apr. 1st, 2022

Apr. 4th, 2022

Apr. 5th, 2022

Apr. 6th, 2022

Apr. 7th, 2022

Apr. 8th, 2022

Apr. 12th, 2022

Apr. 13th, 2022

Apr. 14th, 2022

Apr. 15th, 2022

Apr. 25th, 2022

Apr. 25th, 2022

Apr. 27th, 2022

Apr. 28th, 2022

May 2nd, 2022

May 3rd, 2022

May 4th, 2022

May 5th, 2022

May 6th, 2022

May 9th, 2022

May 11th, 2022

May 12th, 2022

May 13th, 2022

May 16th, 2022

May 18th, 2022

May 19th, 2022

May 20th, 2022

May 23rd, 2022

May 25th, 2022

May 27th, 2022

May 31st, 2022

Jun. 1st, 2022

Jun. 3rd, 2022

Jun. 6th, 2022

Jun. 7th, 2022

Jun. 9th, 2022

Jun. 13th, 2022

Jun. 17th, 2022

Sep. 9th, 2022

Sep. 12th, 2022

Sep. 13th, 2022

Sep. 14th, 2022

Sep. 15th, 2022

Sep. 16th, 2022

Sep. 20th, 2022

Sep. 21st, 2022

Sep. 26th, 2022

Sep. 27th, 2022

Sep. 28th, 2022

Sep. 29th, 2022

Sep. 30th, 2022

Oct. 3rd, 2022

Oct. 4th, 2022

Oct. 5th, 2022

Oct. 6th, 2022

Oct. 11th, 2022

Oct. 12th, 2022

Oct. 13th, 2022

Oct. 13th, 2022

Oct. 17th, 2022

Oct. 18th, 2022

Oct. 19th, 2022

Oct. 20th, 2022

Oct. 21st, 2022

Oct. 24th, 2022

Oct. 25th, 2022

Oct. 26th, 2022

Oct. 27th, 2022

Oct. 28th, 2022

Nov. 1st, 2022

Nov. 7th, 2022

Nov. 9th, 2022

Nov. 10th, 2022

Nov. 14th, 2022

Nov. 15th, 2022

Nov. 16th, 2022

Nov. 17th, 2022

Nov. 18th, 2022

Nov. 21st, 2022

Nov. 22nd, 2022

Nov. 28th, 2022

Nov. 29th, 2022

Nov. 30th, 2022

Dec. 1st, 2022

Dec. 1st, 2022

Dec. 5th, 2022

Dec. 6th, 2022

Dec. 7th, 2022

Dec. 9th, 2022

Dec. 19th, 2022

Dec. 20th, 2022

Dec. 21st, 2022

Dec. 22nd, 2022

Jan. 3rd, 2023

Jan. 4th, 2023

Jan. 5th, 2023

Jan. 5th, 2023

Jan. 9th, 2023

Jan. 10th, 2023

Jan. 11th, 2023

Jan. 12th, 2023

Jan. 13th, 2023

Jan. 17th, 2023

Jan. 19th, 2023

Jan. 20th, 2023

Jan. 23rd, 2023

Jan. 24th, 2023

Jan. 25th, 2023

Jan. 26th, 2023

Jan. 27th, 2023

Jan. 30th, 2023

Feb. 3rd, 2023

Feb. 6th, 2023

Feb. 7th, 2023

Feb. 8th, 2023

Feb. 10th, 2023

Feb. 13th, 2023

Feb. 14th, 2023

Feb. 15th, 2023

Feb. 21st, 2023

Feb. 21st, 2023

Feb. 23rd, 2023

Feb. 24th, 2023

Mar. 8th, 2023

Mar. 10th, 2023

Mar. 13th, 2023

Mar. 14th, 2023

Mar. 15th, 2023

Mar. 16th, 2023

Mar. 17th, 2023

Mar. 20th, 2023

Mar. 21st, 2023

Mar. 22nd, 2023

Mar. 23rd, 2023

Mar. 24th, 2023

Mar. 27th, 2023

Mar. 28th, 2023

Mar. 29th, 2023

Mar. 31st, 2023

Apr. 3rd, 2023

Apr. 4th, 2023

Apr. 6th, 2023

Apr. 7th, 2023

Apr. 10th, 2023

Apr. 11th, 2023

Apr. 12th, 2023

Apr. 13th, 2023

Apr. 14th, 2023

Apr. 24th, 2023

Apr. 25th, 2023

Apr. 26th, 2023

May 1st, 2023

May 15th, 2023

May 19th, 2023

May 22nd, 2023

May 26th, 2023

May 30th, 2023

Jun. 2nd, 2023

Jun. 5th, 2023

Jun. 9th, 2023

Jun. 12th, 2023

Jun. 16th, 2023

Sep. 11th, 2023

Sep. 13th, 2023

Sep. 15th, 2023

Sep. 18th, 2023

Sep. 20th, 2023

Sep. 22nd, 2023

Sep. 25th, 2023

Sep. 27th, 2023

Oct. 2nd, 2023

Oct. 4th, 2023

Oct. 10th, 2023

Oct. 11th, 2023

Oct. 13th, 2023

Oct. 15th, 2023

Oct. 18th, 2023

Oct. 20th, 2023

Oct. 23rd, 2023

Oct. 25th, 2023

Oct. 27th, 2023

Oct. 30th, 2023

Nov. 1st, 2023

Nov. 6th, 2023

Nov. 9th, 2023

Nov. 13th, 2023

Nov. 15th, 2023

Nov. 17th, 2023

Nov. 20th, 2023

Nov. 27th, 2023

Nov. 29th, 2023

Dec. 1st, 2023

Dec. 4th, 2023

Dec. 6th, 2023

Dec. 8th, 2023

Dec. 11th, 2023

Dec. 13th, 2023

Dec. 15th, 2023

Dec. 18th, 2023

Dec. 19th, 2023

Jan. 3rd, 2024

Jan. 5th, 2024

Jan. 8th, 2024

Jan. 10th, 2024

Jan. 12th, 2024

Jan. 19th, 2024

Jan. 22nd, 2024

Jan. 24th, 2024

Jan. 26th, 2024

Jan. 29th, 2024

Jan. 31st, 2024

Feb. 1st, 2024

Feb. 5th, 2024

Feb. 7th, 2024

Feb. 9th, 2024

Feb. 12th, 2024

Feb. 16th, 2024

Feb. 20th, 2024

Feb. 22nd, 2024

Mar. 4th, 2024

Mar. 6th, 2024

Mar. 8th, 2024

Mar. 11th, 2024

Mar. 12th, 2024

Mar. 14th, 2024

Mar. 18th, 2024

Mar. 22nd, 2024

Mar. 25th, 2024

Mar. 27th, 2024

Apr. 1st, 2024

Apr. 5th, 2024

Apr. 8th, 2024

Apr. 9th, 2024

Apr. 12th, 2024

Apr. 22nd, 2024

Apr. 24th, 2024

Apr. 26th, 2024

Apr. 29th, 2024

May 1st, 2024

May 2nd, 2024

May 6th, 2024

May 8th, 2024

May 10th, 2024

May 15th, 2024

May 31st, 2024

Jun. 5th, 2024

Jun. 7th, 2024

Jun. 10th, 2024

Jun. 12th, 2024

Jun. 14th, 2024

Episode 1, Sep. 13th, 2024

The relaunch. After years as the Whaler News Network, the middle school’s news club rebrands as the CPS Pulse and moves to Friday mornings, and the first broadcast is mostly a recruiting pitch — newscasters, writers, editors and camera operators all wanted. A logo design contest offers a gift card for the winning artwork, and the club’s advisor admits on camera that some of the older students would rather the old name had stayed.

Episode 2, Sep. 20th, 2024

The second broadcast settles into the format the show will keep: a local business sponsor, birthday shout-outs, and the week’s announcements. Logo contest entries are due by afternoon, a gender and sexuality alliance is meeting after school, a games club holds its first meeting next week, and student council has spirit week ready for homecoming.

Episode 16, Feb. 7th, 2025

The lead story is the island’s only ice rink, which may have to close temporarily after failing a fire department safety inspection over a faulty refrigeration system — officials have until the tenth to fix it and hope to save the winter season. Closer to home, one of the show’s own sports reporters has won the Steamship Authority’s calendar contest with her artwork, and teachers are being nudged to finish their doors for the February decorating contest.

Episode 20, Feb. 14th, 2025

A Valentine’s Day broadcast, and the ice rink story from two weeks earlier resolves: the rink installed a new detection system over the weekend, cleared the fire department’s February 10th deadline, and will stay open to its usual mid-March close, though a restaurant there has shut temporarily for repairs of its own. For Black History Month the show profiles Captain Absalom F. Boston, who commanded the island’s first all-Black whaling crew aboard the Industry in 1822 and forced the desegregation of Nantucket’s schools in 1846 after his daughter was refused admission. A classroom reads out the week’s lunch menu, and the broadcast ends by going around the building asking students and staff who their valentine is.

Episode 21, Feb. 21st, 2025

Demolition starts on Sparks Avenue, where the old Downyflake building and five neighboring properties come down inside a week to make way for what developers call Nantucket’s new downtown — restaurants, apartments and an eight-lane bowling alley — with no word yet on whether the breakfast spot itself returns. The Black History Month segment turns to the Civil War, the first conflict the island joined after generations of Quaker pacifism: Nantucket sent 339 men, among them about twenty Black islanders who served mostly in the Union Navy and who lie in the historic Colored Cemetery under government headstones. A fashion segment works the hallway asking students where their outfits came from.

Episode 22, Mar. 7th, 2025

Marine Home Center warns customers of price rises after a 25 percent tariff on Canadian and Mexican goods takes effect, naming spruce lumber, cedar shingles and plywood among the materials affected. The show’s advisor spent Wednesday night out in the rain on Main Street raising money for the Warming Place, the island’s new homeless shelter. For Women’s History Month the broadcast profiles Maria Mitchell, the Nantucket astronomer who in 1847 became the first woman to discover a comet, and the library opens a March Madness bracket in which students pick winning books from their summaries.

Episode 23, Mar. 14th, 2025

The season’s first North Atlantic right whale mother and calf turn up in Cape Cod Bay, spotted from the air five miles off Wellfleet; the mother is thirty-one and was last seen with her newborn off Georgia in December. For Women’s History Month the show profiles Lucy Stone, who brought her campaign for women’s rights and abolition to Nantucket in 1853, helped organize the first women’s rights convention, co-founded the American Woman Suffrage Association, and returned to the island in 1886 to speak at its suffrage convention. The Bruins trade captain Brad Marchand to Florida, the high school opens The Little Mermaid, and the science festival fills the gym on Saturday.

Episode 24, Mar. 21st, 2025

With both anchors out, the club’s advisor reads the news himself. The second trimester ends today and eighth graders begin choosing their ninth grade classes with the guidance counselor. In island news, the Golf Club Foundation has named the finalists for a scholarship program that has sent two Nantucket seniors to college on a full four-year ride every year since 2006.

Episode 25, Mar. 28th, 2025

A new co-anchor takes the desk. The island news is a restaurant story: a beloved Orange Street place that closed the previous February is returning in a new downtown location under a new name, bringing back its original dishes and adding burgers and fries. Eighth graders are still being chased for their yearbook baby pictures.

Episode 25, Apr. 11th, 2025

The Litter Derby results lead the show, and the numbers are worth hearing: more than 130 volunteers in 23 teams cleared over 15 tons of trash from the island in two days — 14,800 pounds of metal, 8,000 of ordinary trash, 2,000 of hazardous waste, 1,700 of glass and 650 of plastic. The yearbook is on sale, and teachers are asked to send in anything photo-worthy.

Episode 26, Apr. 18th, 2025

A follow-up to the previous week: ferry service at the Steamship terminal is still running slowly after a dolphin — part of the dock structure — broke earlier in the month, leaving only one slip in use. Eighth graders are voting on student superlatives and the yearbook price has come down a couple of dollars.

Episode 29, May 2nd, 2025

Rain on Saturday morning did nothing to stop the Daffodil Festival: more than a hundred decorated antique cars lined Main Street for the parade, judged by the chamber of commerce in categories from most authentic to best decorated. The eighth grade semiformal is at the Great Harbor Yacht Club on Sunday night.

Episode 30, May 9th, 2025

A new restaurant opens on Easy Street serving American comfort food, which the anchors run through dish by dish. Sixth and seventh graders interested in playing football next year have a meeting with the coach in the gym this afternoon, and the yearbook is still on sale at the front office.

Episode 31, May 16th, 2025

Festival season opens with the 27th Nantucket Wine and Food Festival running through the weekend, and the Farmers and Artisans Market returns downtown for Memorial Day. Eighth graders begin jump up day sessions to prepare them for high school, the Celtics lose their star to a torn Achilles mid-playoffs, and the Dreamland hosts a world premiere stage adaptation of Dr. Strangelove. For Mental Health Awareness Month the broadcast tells students to take health information from doctors and mental health professionals rather than from public figures whose claims experts question.

Episode 34, May 23rd, 2025

Praise for the students who played Wednesday night’s band concert opens the show. The practical news is for eighth graders: next week brings the last of the jump-up afternoons at a community organization that helps them get ready for high school, running after school into the evening.

Episode 35, May 30th, 2025

Fifteen days of school left, and the librarian wants every outstanding book back and every fine paid before the summer inventory — including anything borrowed from the elementary or intermediate schools. The sixth grade teachers have built a downtown scavenger hunt where the students lead the way, solving problems and collecting items as they go.

Episode 36, Jun. 6th, 2025

The last broadcast of the school year, and the principal’s newsletter carries the big news: from September, phones go into locked Yondr pouches on the way into the building and come out at an unlocking station on the way home. The calendar to the final half-day fills with jump up day, field days, a cardboard boat race and the eighth grade promotion, and the eighth graders return from Egan Maritime’s tall ship expedition. The school’s gay-straight alliance invites everyone to wear rainbow colors for Pride Month, and the advisor signs off by thanking two anchors who have been with him since sixth grade.

Episode 1, Sep. 4th, 2025

Season two opens with new anchors, a new daily schedule and a teleprompter that is not working yet, which the anchors apologize for on air. The message that matters is tomorrow’s assembly at the high school auditorium, where students will hear about the changes coming to the middle school — the new cell phone policy above all.

Episode 2, Sep. 12th, 2025

The teleprompter is still broken, so the anchors read from a Chromebook. School pictures and the autumn open house get their dates, the games club moves to Tuesdays, and the broadcast is sponsored by a water sports shop the anchors rate chiefly for having the best candy on the island.

Episode 3, Sep. 19th, 2025

The island news is a benefit: a Knights of Columbus fundraiser at the VFW, with ten teams serving smoked meats, raising money for two longtime islanders whose house burned down over the summer. School pictures and the open house are a few weeks out.

Episode 4, Sep. 26th, 2025

The top story is e-bikes on campus: Superintendent Hallett is quoted in the local paper on a sharp rise in use and in dangerous riding, and Principal Horton follows with word that e-bike parking is moving away from the building, leaving students to walk the last hundred yards. He also covers hallway etiquette, what a damaged Chromebook or phone pouch costs to replace, and how many late arrivals earn a Saturday detention. A crew films on Main Street for Peacock’s adaptation of Elin Hilderbrand’s The Five-Star Weekend, and the show closes on Hispanic Heritage Month with the note that Hispanic or Latino students make up 41 percent of the district.

Episode 5, Oct. 3rd, 2025

The lead story is a guest speaker the high school hosted the week before, a former Marine brought in to talk about confidence and school culture; students and staff later found posts on his social media about marriage and gender that many read as offensive, and school leaders said they had not known of them and that the views do not reflect the district’s values. Recreational scalloping opens for the season, and last week’s e-bike story returns as officials weigh clearer rules against models closer to motorcycles than bicycles. The entertainment segment belongs to a Taylor Swift release party at the Dreamland that night, and a classroom sketch turns a subtraction problem into a chant.

Episode 6, Oct. 10th, 2025

The top story is the show itself. Last week’s episode became the most watched the Pulse has ever made, on the strength of a video in which the teachers impersonated a slang craze sweeping the middle school — and the island’s news site reposted it, which the anchors take as proof the program is now famous.

Episode 7, Oct. 17th, 2025

The assistant principal has a warning that leads the broadcast: counterfeit hundred dollar bills are circulating in school again, as they tend to around Halloween, and while passing them between students might feel like a joke, spending one at a shop downtown is a crime. The anchors tell anyone holding the fake money to stop using it now.

Episode 8, Oct. 24th, 2025

Halloween costumes will not be allowed during the school day — a district-wide decision the superintendent is passing to parents at all three schools — though orange, black, green or purple clothing is encouraged instead. The top story is the district’s strong showing on this year’s MCAS results.

Episode 9, Oct. 31st, 2025

The Halloween broadcast, with thanks to student council for spirit week and to the administration for a pumpkin decorating contest, and an inflatable costume race between homerooms to look forward to that afternoon. The librarian introduces a loyalty card for readers who keep returning books.

Episode 10, Nov. 7th, 2025

Student council is putting on a Friendsgiving dance in the cafeteria next Friday evening, with a photo booth, a bake sale run by the eighth grade and a DJ. The yearbook club is collecting photographs from every grade, and childhood pictures from the eighth graders.

Episode 11, Nov. 14th, 2025

E-bikes lead the show for a second week. The police are enforcing the rules after a rise in accidents and injuries, and the anchors explain the part most riders do not know: a class 3 bike capable of more than 20 miles an hour is not legally a bicycle in Massachusetts, which means a license and riding in the road rather than on a path.

Episode 12, Nov. 21st, 2025

A sperm whale has washed up on the north shore — the first to do so since 2002 — and has drawn crowds while experts carry out a necropsy on the beach. The anchors pass on the warning to keep a safe distance from the carcass; the cause of death is not yet known.

Episode 13, Dec. 5th, 2025

Christmas Stroll weekend has arrived and the island is braced for one of its busiest weekends of the year: extra ferry runs all weekend, a sold-out high-speed boat, and calm weather that should keep everything on schedule. The chorus, band and orchestra are congratulated for Wednesday’s concert.

Episode 14, Dec. 12th, 2025

The Atheneum is reviving One Book One Island, the program that has the whole island reading the same title. The library is also opening early before the break for a holiday morning of hot chocolate, music, games and an elf hunt with prizes, and everyone is invited.

Episode 15, Dec. 19th, 2025

The top story is the School Committee’s 4–1 vote to put a synthetic track and turf field at Vito Capizzo Stadium, reversing an earlier plan for asphalt and natural grass after public opposition; the roughly $23 million project now goes to the town’s financial review and could reach the 2026 town meeting warrant. Dr. Tim Lepore cast the lone no vote, backing the track but objecting to PFAS chemicals in the turf. A politics segment on US strikes against boats off Venezuela and Colombia ends by telling students to read several sources and weigh differing views, and the last broadcast of 2025 signs off into the holiday break.

Episode 16, Jan. 9th, 2026

Flu is filling hospitals and emergency rooms across Massachusetts, and wastewater testing on Nantucket shows influenza, COVID-19 and RSV all climbing — so the broadcast turns into a public health notice about vaccines, handwashing and staying home when ill. In lighter news, the town bell at the Unitarian Church is working again.

Episode 17, Jan. 16th, 2026

The lead is whales: 33 North Atlantic right whales counted in Cape Cod Bay in a single January day, one of the highest counts on record, with a ten-knot limit on large boats to keep the endangered animals from being struck — and a reminder that on Nantucket these are not creatures from a book but animals swimming just off the coast. A record deer harvest has the state extending the season to mid-February, NCTV’s free filmmaking workshop at the Dreamland is pitched as a head start on a Shorts Fest entry, and the Egan Maritime Institute opens a free boat-building program for middle schoolers.

Episode 18, Jan. 23rd, 2026

The northern lights turn up over Nantucket after a severe geomagnetic storm, and the weather segment follows them with an Arctic blast and a Sunday storm forecast to drop five to eight inches. Crews begin clearing Cold War–era debris from Tom Nevers Beach, left by a US Navy base, under a $2 million first phase covering the beach, the ramp and the bluff. Varsity football coach Coreese “Reese” Everett steps down after four years and is leaving the island, the politics segment takes up the proposal for the United States to acquire Greenland, and the island’s first baby of 2026 arrives nearly two weeks into the year.

Episode 19, Jan. 30th, 2026

The Select Board raises the bay scallop bushel limit to make up for the ten days scallopers have lost to wind and cold, with more expected from the weekend storm. Last weekend’s eight inches of snow closed school for two days, and the weather segment is already watching the next system. Town officials warn people off the saltwater ice forming in the harbor and Hither Creek, which shifts with the tide; a Cape Air flight turns back after smoke appears in the cabin; and the Patriots reach their twelfth Super Bowl. The Dog Film Festival follows last weekend’s Cat Film Festival at the Dreamland.

Episode 20, Feb. 6th, 2026

Vandals cut the geotubes protecting Sconset Bluff, and the beach preservation fund calls it a deliberate criminal act. The harbor is starting to freeze, boats are canceled and games postponed — though Nantucket’s own groundhog called an early spring, and the weather segment notes that Pennsylvania’s got it wrong. The Patriots reach their twelfth Super Bowl against Seattle, the Historical Association marks Black History Month at the African Meeting House with music and spoken word, and Egan Maritime opens a free boating safety course that ends in a junior operator’s license.

Episode 21, Feb. 13th, 2026

The Patriots lose the Super Bowl to Seattle, closing out a run this show had followed since January, and the Winter Olympics open in Italy. A Mid-Island restaurant changes hands after 28 years under its previous owners, and another island restaurant prepares to reopen under a new licensee. Police are still investigating six bomb threats made against a Main Street store since last summer, with no arrests and a suspect using technology that resists tracing. The politics segment covers a school shooting in British Columbia and uses it to compare Canadian and American gun laws, ending as it always does with a question for the viewer.

Episode 22, Feb. 20th, 2026

A public meeting at the high school lays out the Capizzo Stadium plan, where the argument is over the cost of artificial turf and whether the PFAS in it would reach the island’s drinking water. Whaler Wellness runs for a fourth year, an idea two teachers brought back from a conference in Florida. Commercial scallopers get their daily limit raised from six bushels to seven after cold weather kept the fleet ashore for two weeks, Steamship Authority summer bookings open, and Team USA sits third in the medal count at the Milan winter games.

Episode 23, Mar. 6th, 2026

The principal takes the top slot himself to address vaping at the school: tips from parents, backpacks searched, an assembly during Whaler Wellness Day, and a reminder that being caught means a three-day suspension and a mandatory counseling program. He also reports high schoolers trying to supply middle schoolers, and the security measures that follow. The Board of Health takes up whether synthetic turf at the stadium would put PFAS into the island’s drinking water, the Atheneum names Nathaniel Philbrick the first winner of its Luminary Award, and the weather segment looks back on one of the worst blizzards in years.

Episode 24, Mar. 13th, 2026

The Old South Diner sells a $2 million scratch ticket, its first winner in two years. The Finance Committee votes 4–3 against backing a rebuilt Our Island Home, leaving the nursing home’s $130 to $150 million future to town meeting and raising the prospect that the current building closes. Jayson Tatum returns to the Celtics ten months after the Achilles tear this show reported at the time, the Maria Mitchell Association brings a science comedy act to the Dreamland, and NCTV opens a sports filming class on a broadcast camera.

Episode 25, Mar. 27th, 2026

The Historic District Commission signs off on parts of the stadium upgrade with little debate — a team building, a larger concession stand, more seating, a better press box — though the money still rests with May’s town meeting. The Maria Mitchell Association floats a stargazers circus at Tom Nevers as a summer fundraiser, still waiting on town approval, and a No Kings demonstration is called at the Milestone Rotary. A partial government shutdown leaves TSA screeners working unpaid, and student work from both schools hangs at a downtown gallery.

Episode 26, Apr. 3rd, 2026

The high-speed ferry comes back from its winter break at four crossings a day, and a Cape charter boat starts running island athletes and their supporters to Martha’s Vineyard on days the regular service cannot. Commercial scalloping closes at somewhere near 8,000 bushels, well down on last year but within a normal range, with plenty of young scallops coming for the next one. A new carrier opens flights from Hanscom Field in June, a teacher makes an open call for Alice in Wonderland Jr. — no audition, no experience — and the library’s book tournament reaches its final two.

Episode 27, Apr. 10th, 2026

A Cape Air flight from Nantucket loses part of a door shortly after takeoff and flies six to eight minutes with it open before turning back safely. The town approves a plan for up to fifty housing units for teachers, police and public works staff over the next decade, at around $7 million and subject to town meeting. Massachusetts votes to ban social media for under-sixteens from October, a pond is opened to the ocean for its twice-yearly flush, Artemis II rounds the moon and heads home, and the show debuts a comic strip of its own.

Episode 28, Apr. 17th, 2026

Nourish Nantucket opens a summer meal program at the Food Hub — free grab-and-go breakfast and lunch for every student from pre-K to twelfth grade, no sign-up — to cover the months when free and reduced-price school meals stop. The Litter Derby pulls 6.4 tons of trash off the island in two days across eighteen teams, the hospital books its Boston Pops headliner for August, and the Conservation Foundation sets five riddles around the island for the week off. The politics segment takes an AI-generated image of the president that went viral and asks how such pictures change the way people see real figures.

Episode 29, May 1st, 2026

Peacock releases a first preview for its adaptation of Elin Hilderbrand’s The Five-Star Weekend, shot on the island last fall and due in July, with Jennifer Garner among the cast. The politics segment reports an assassination attempt on the president at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, where a gunman got through a checkpoint and wounded a bystander before being arrested. A barge capsizes off Brant Point and is spotted by a Coast Guard crew on their way out to train, two island seniors take full four-year college scholarships from the Golf Club Foundation, and the Daffodil Festival gets its review.

Episode 30, May 8th, 2026

Town meeting approves a new Our Island Home and a $26 million rebuild of the high school athletic fields, turf and track included, with both still needing a ballot vote later in the month. In the same session residents reject extending the Sconset geotubes 182 to 163, a defeat for the town and the beach preservation fund even with Select Board backing and some $9 million in reserve funding behind it. The Celtics go out in a game seven, and the Film Festival and NCTV open a teen digital storytelling program for the summer.

Episode 31, May 15th, 2026

A jury orders the owners of the Veranda House to pay $3.5 million to three neighboring households for the harm done by the 2022 fire, short of what the neighbors had asked for and on top of rebuilding costs the company had already met. The Land Bank begins moving houses off Jefferson Avenue to be refurbished and sold as middle-income and worker housing, with the beach there meant to open to the public by the Fourth of July. Alice in Wonderland Jr. opens at the school, and the girls lacrosse team stays unbeaten through seven while three more games fall off the calendar.

Episode 32, May 22nd, 2026

The Downyflake returns after some eighteen months dark, reopening inside the Faregrounds with doughnuts and coffee and the old sign hung indoors — the end of a story this show began when it covered the demolition of the Sparks Avenue building. Voters approve all seven ballot questions at town election, more than $200 million in all, including a new Our Island Home and the high school athletic upgrades, and Bob DeCosta and Jill Vieth take Select Board seats. The New Moon Festival comes back to the Sconset Casino for a third year of films by women, the Figawi race runs its fiftieth edition, and the girls JV lacrosse team’s undefeated season ends early when its remaining games are called off.

Episode 33, May 29th, 2026

Town officials raise safety and cleanup concerns about the Daffodil Festival — crowds, trash, drinking, traffic — against others who say it carries local business and is a tradition worth keeping. A downtown tavern looks likely to change hands after the summer, a story the anchors note affects several of their own teachers who work there evenings and weekends. A fifteen-year-old lands the first bluefish of the season and the first reported on the island this year, and both varsity lacrosse teams head into the Division 4 playoffs, the boys seeded second at 15 and 3.

Episode 34, Jun. 5th, 2026

The last show of the season. A new principal is named for the elementary school — Michael Stanton, currently leading a school in Foxborough, succeeding Kimberly Kubisch after her fifteen years. An island resident remains in a coma after being pulled unconscious from the harbor, with friends raising more than $21,000 for the family. A meteor that broke up thirty-one miles above the island on Saturday is thought to have come down in Cape Cod Bay, where scientists may go after the pieces with magnets, and a special report previews a World Cup shared across three countries. The crew signs off thanking their teachers, their sponsors and NCTV.

Episode 1, Sep. 25th, 2026

Season three opens with a reminder that anyone who misses the broadcast in homeroom can catch it again that evening on NCTV. The top story is the long storm forecast for the weekend and the islanders moving boats to safer moorings ahead of it; school pictures follow in two weeks.

Episode 2, Oct. 2nd, 2026

The state puts forward a redesign of the Milestone Road rotary — a lane added on Old South Road and Sparks Avenue, a change to the direction cars enter, and a larger rotary, at an estimated $5.8 million — for an intersection that ranks in the top five percent for crashes on the island. Around thirty-four weddings had been booked for the weekend of the nor’easter, some canceled and others replanned in a couple of days. Erosion from that same storm uncovers wreckage at Miacomet Beach that the Historical Association believes may be the Warren Sawyer, a wooden sailing ship driven ashore there in 1884 on a run from New Orleans to Boston; her crew was taken off by the Surfside Life-Saving Station, and some of the pieces match a wreck found on the beach in 2022. School pictures are set for Tuesday, two after-school clubs open — podcasts, reading and crafting on Mondays in the library and art on Tuesdays — and the football team takes its first win of the season over Falmouth 8–6. A new movie review segment debuts.

Episode 3, Oct. 9th, 2026

The top story is a Canadian air ambulance that went missing over the Atlantic south of Nantucket early Saturday on a flight from Bermuda to Boston with six aboard — a mother and son from Bermuda and four Canadian crew. The crew reported trouble about an hour out of Bermuda before controllers lost contact, and the Coast Guard searched by air and by boat. Sankaty Head Lighthouse is getting a round of repairs funded by the Community Preservation Committee: resealing the lantern room glass, masonry work, metalwork and repainting. Enrollment in the island’s four public schools falls by another six students to 1,604, down about 6.7 percent in two years and a sharp reversal of the growth the district saw through the 2010s. A golden retriever caught in the current off Codfish Park is pulled from the water by a local fishing crew working with police and the harbormaster’s office. The Shorts Festival comes to the Dreamland on Saturday, the cross country team wins behind a first-place finish, and the JV golf team stays undefeated.

Episode 4, Oct. 16th, 2026

The Gazebo is expected to change hands, with an off-island restaurant group taking over from the operator who has managed it since 1993 and owned it since 2022, after the company that owns the property declined to extend his lease last May. The anchors report the unease that has followed: another long-standing island business passing to outside investors, and what that does to Nantucket’s character and its year-round residents. The Steamship Authority is weighing fare increases for 2027 against higher fuel and operating costs — up to $29 more each way for a car in the busy season, $2.50 more for an adult high-speed ticket and a dollar more on the slow boat — which together would raise close to $10 million. Nothing has been approved. A newly built nine-bedroom house on Cliff Road lists at $45 million, which would be a state record, and crews lift the 9,000-pound cap and the tail pole off the Old Mill, the oldest working windmill in the country, at the start of a restoration expected to run several years. The girls soccer team beats Mashpee and the field hockey team wins at Barnstable, and the movie review takes on Hocus Pocus.

Episode 5, Oct. 30th, 2026

The top story is the Planning Board’s move toward stricter limits on chain stores downtown, after island businesses pressed for tighter rules on national brands and temporary pop-up shops. The discussion followed Roller Rabbit’s reopening as a general store; the chair has floated cutting the threshold that makes a retailer a chain from ten locations to three, with pop-ups still unsettled. Nantucket Cottage Hospital places tenth in Soliant Health’s 2026 ranking of the most beautiful hospitals in the country, one of twenty chosen by public vote from fifty-seven finalists, credited for its gardens, whale tail statue and setting. It is homecoming weekend: a pig roast, pep rally and bonfire at Vito Capizzo Field on Friday evening, games against Martha’s Vineyard on Saturday, and the Halloween costume parade and contest on Main Street at three. The Coast Guard haunted house returns, free with a canned good for the Nantucket Food Pantry. Girls soccer beats Dennis-Yarmouth 5–1 and the boys JV side beats Sandwich 7–0, while field hockey and volleyball both lose to Barnstable. The operator who has just ended thirty-four years at the Tavern and the Gazebo gives $18,000 to an island addiction nonprofit, raised by selling memorabilia, and Nantucket places fifth among American islands in Condé Nast Traveler’s Readers’ Choice Awards.

Class of 2021

Class of 2022

Class of 2023

Class of 2024

Class of 2025

Class of 2026