Longmeadow Middle School Principal Peter Gillen is working alongside Glenbrook Middle School and Williams Middle School staff to shape the new middle school’s identity.
Photo credit: LongmeadowTV
LONGMEADOW — Longmeadow students will be walking through the doors of the new Longmeadow Middle School in just two years, and Principal Peter Gillen is leading the charge to build the school’s identity — from curriculum to the mascot.
Gillen presented the ongoing identity-building process and some of the next steps toward getting the school ready to open in 2028 at the School Committee meeting on Sept. 22.
Superintendent Martin O’Shea said the district wants to convey interest to the community and School Committee by working as an administrative team across two buildings to “ensure that we’re working towards that singular identity when we open in 2028.”
“Before Pete joined us in July, last year, our two staffs at both [Glenbrook Middle School] and [Williams Middle School] began working together,” O’Shea said. “One of the tasks, they had both members serving on a design advisory group. Across both schools, teachers worked on the development of an LMS program of studies. Prior to last year, we didn’t have a written program of studies, one that, sort of, mirrored the program of studies that we have at [Longmeadow High School], which we call the educational opportunities book.”
O’Shea said there is a foundation of practice to get the two staffs working together and he appreciates Gillen building on last year’s work.
Gillen said he and the staff have been present in the schools and conducting weekly walkthroughs. He said it’s been remarkable to see great work happening in the classrooms.
“We meet as a group weekly,” Gillen said. “On Wednesday afternoons, that full administrative team sits down and processes unifying as a school. That starts with just getting to know each other’s practices, finding some common ground and then building towards what’s rapidly to come. It’s interesting when you’re at Williams, you can feel how rapidly it’s coming. There’s a rattle and a shake for sure for the students and staff at Williams.”
The school’s loop driveway is expected to be completed on Sept. 28. Gillen said he joined O’Shea in looking at accents for the new building, including tiling, colors and paints.
“We got together with those designers and it was a pretty amazing process,” Gillen said. “It’s going to be a very, very beautiful building. We’re really excited.”
He meets with the architect and contractor on Fridays and said the meetings have switched from virtual to on-site as the building begins to take shape.
Two teachers led a collaborative professional development day on Aug. 25 to bring the two staffs together. Another professional development day will occur on Oct. 5 to discuss curriculum and departments.
Gillen said the two administrations will figure out “where we stand, in terms of commonality, as we start to build even further what the unified school will look like,” such as climate, traditions, processes and norms.
He added bell schedules will start to be created, with a target goal for before June 1, 2027.
“I think a lot stems from what a bell schedule looks like,” Gillen said. “It goes hand-in-hand with programming, but having a real look at what your bell schedule and your day-to-day will look like is really the keep step … I’m hopeful starting in mid-October to get folks from both buildings together to start to dig into some of that bell schedule work.”
Gillen said the “big news” is for the mascot and school colors. Participants represented the entire Longmeadow Public Schools community to share feedback on what the preferred mascots and color may be.
Glenbrook and Williams staff preferred either the “Knights” or the “Lancers” for a name and black and silver for colors. He said black and silver match the Longmeadow brand and identity.
“There wasn’t much close after that,” Gillen said. “There was a good number of outliers, but Knights and Lancers were the two preferred names, with Knights leading the way … The note about this that I often make is that, remember that this is the brand that we use for apparel and for things of that sort. Black is not going to be the color of the building, it’s just, sort of, the branding color for shirts and sweatshirts and things of that sort to give an identity.”
O’Shea said the gymnasium may have some representation of those colors but the rest of the building would not have black and silver accents.
The mascot and logo designs will occur sometime after the Oct. 5 professional development day and the community will have a chance to provide feedback on different options.
