User fees upped for freshman sports

BY LEIGH BLANDER

Freshman sports will be played this fall, after the School Committee approved an increase in Marblehead High School user fees to fund the program. User fees for students participating in athletics or performing arts are now $495 for the 2023-24 school year, a $12 increase over the previously-announced fee.

“I’m not going to take access away from a couple hundred kids for $12,” said School Committee Chair Sarah Fox.

The committee advised Superintendent John Buckey to alert MHS Athletics Director Greg Ceglarski that freshman sports will be happening.

“That’s good news,” said committee member Jenn Schaeffner.

Weather, wind and tide create an exciting mix of challenges for competition

BY LAURIE FULLERTON

The 39th biennial Marblehead-toHalifax race featured a spectacular start with brightly colored spinnaker sails outside Marblehead Harbor on July 9. Up to 600 sailors on 70 boats in 11 fleets sailed downwind and made a turn off Tinker’s Island, setting course for Halifax, Nova Scotia.

A large spectator fleet on land at Castle Rock and offshore in a flotilla of boats got a chance to see some very close racing from the starting gun, and sailors in every fleet talked about the excitement and desire to return to the competitive and challenging 363-nautical-mile course.

The fleet included Naval midshipmen, cadets and young sailors from up and down the Eastern seaboard and Canada, as well as

BY LEIGH BLANDER

I have wanted to be a news reporter since I was a kid carrying a notebook around my neighborhood and on my school playground, jotting down interesting things people were doing and saying.

veteran teams who joined to do one of their favorite ocean races. Sailors from as far away as Europe and Australia competed.

As of press time, in the ORR (Offshore Racing Rule) 1 class, the Reichel Pugh 66 Kodiak, with the Naval Academy at Annapolis, was in first place ahead of Wahoo, the Kerr 50 also operated by midshipmen from the academy. Sailed by undergraduates ranging in age from 18 to 20, the race serves to train midshipmen to overcome challenges, adapt and gain experience. It is also a great way to learn about ocean racing. Each team is accompanied by one older adult coach.

Kodiak helmsman Javier Jimenez

Kane noted that his crew of 16 undergraduate young men and women included five seniors, six

Years later, journalism degree in hand, I launched into a career of reporting and producing in TV, radio and print newsrooms.

I have loved every minute of it. There have been so many important stories to tell: the fall of the Soviet Union (yes, I’m that old), presidential elections, terror attacks, climate change, social justice movements…

Before co-founding the Marblehead Current, all my juniors and five freshmen.

“Being young we do very well sailing at night because we have a lot of energy and we are used to staying previous journalism jobs were with for-profit networks and companies, and while I never felt pressured to cover a story in a certain way, I knew not all the news we wrote was helping people or advancing public discourse.

While at a Boston TV station, we covered the O.J. Simpson trial relentlessly to huge ratings. More and more, we focused on stories we knew would grab

Special Ed review

The committee also decided to invest some of a $500,000 surplus (from unpaid salaries of teachers who unexpectedly retired or resigned) to fund a review of the district’s special education program.

A note to our readers

Our next print issue will arrive on Aug. 2, allowing our staff a much-deserved respite. Until then, the news continues online!

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» Site: marbleheadcurrent.org people’s attention, even if those stories didn’t inform or educate viewers. (I remember producing a two-minute TV story on plastic surgery for pets. It aired to big ratings across the country.)

As the internet became more popular and ad revenue started drying up for TV, radio and print outlets, I began to watch — with an increasingly broken heart — newsrooms shrink and, for many papers, close. There were more and more layoffs, and a stronger focus on those sexy or divisive stories that would grab viewers’ attention.

It was truly distressing to watch an industry I had always revered — that is critical to our democracy — begin to wither away. That is why I am so passionate about the Current. Along with