West Springfield Middle School Principal Peter Gillen (left) and Mittineague Elementary Principal Michael Pescitelli (right) present the 2025 accountability and climate reports.
Photo credit: West Side Media
WEST SPRINGFIELD — At the West Springfield School Committee meeting on Feb. 10, Mittineague Elementary School Principal Michael Pescitelli and West Springfield Middle School Principal Peter Gillen presented the 2025 accountability and climate reports for their respective schools.
Pescitelli went first and began with Mittineague’s results for the MCAS for grades 3-5.
In English language arts, 35% of students met or exceeded expectations, which is a 20% decrease from 55% in spring 2024. The performance was graded zero out of four possible achievement points and one out of four possible growth points.
“I would also like just to note, it is not short of our students across the board all trying their hardest, across the entire school” Pescitelli said. “That goes for each grade.”
In math, 40% of students met or exceeded expectations, which is a 10% decrease from 50% in spring 2024. The performance was graded zero out of four possible achievement points but two out of four possible growth points. In science, which is only administered to the fifth grade, 31% met or exceeded and the performance was graded two achievement points.
Another piece for accountability is attendance data, which Pescitelli said has been pushed significantly.
“We’ve across-district advocated for this,” Pescitelli said. “We’ve been working with families across the district as well. I can only speak to what we’ve done at Mittineague from day one, from this school year, really ensuring that attendance was something at the forefront.”
Chronic absenteeism is when a student misses 10% or more of the school year, excused absence or not. It did decrease from 2022-2023’s 20.4% to 11.8% in the 2023-2024 school year, but increased again to 20.2% in 2024-2025. The current attendance rate is at 93.1%, a slight decrease.
Pescitelli said it is an entire staff initiative, working with the school adjustment counsilor all the way to the clerk.
“We’re working together,” Pescitelli said. “We’re really trying to focus and develop strong relationships and maintain those relationships with our families and our kids, but really trying to support them – listening to their story, what they need, but then also sharing the importance of them coming in each and every day.”
Current strategies to tackle this are parents meetings with attendance success plans, school wide and classroom positive behavorial interventions and supports and community engagement events promoting the importance of attendance.
Pescitelli highlighted certain events that foster an inclusive school community, such as partnering with Artservatorey for programs that culminated into a community literacy night. Artservatorey is an organization from Framingham that strives to expand access and opportunity for children and youth to experience high quality creative and performing arts programming.
He also noted how the school develops a strong team through things like professional development and coaching, monthly staff gatherings, staff wellness challenges and celebrations of staff, students and community.
“You can hear it in the way I’m describing it this evening,” Pescitelli said. “Across the board from our PTO to our families to our parents, across the board, our children, our students … we are all in it for the same reason. We work together as a team.”
Gillen began with the 2025 accountability data for the middle school. In 2024, 14% of the sixth grade exceeded expectations in ELA, which dropped to 7% for 2025. The percentage of the grade who partially met expectations did rise from 33% to 40% and meeting expectations stayed the same at 29%.
In math, students have been improving steadily since 2023, going from 20% meeting expectations to 36%.
“The work they’ve done since that 2023 year is a trend that I’m confident will continue as you look towards students moving out of that not meeting expectations proponent and moving into meeting expectations,” Gillen said. “We’re happy to see those results continue, we just need to continue to push for all students to make those achievement needs.”
The most growth was seen in the seventh grade for MCAS results. The percentage of the grade meeting expectations went up exponentially in both ELA and math, while the percentage not meeting expectations decreased as well. Exceeding expectations also increased 4% in ELA and 3% in math.
Gillen added that the eighth grade did see some dips, especially in the percentage who met expectations in all three subjects. ELA went down 6%, math went down 11% and science went down 8%. The percentage not meeting expectations increased in all three subjects by 9% in ELA, 12% in math and 7% in science.
He said the school continues to struggle in overall achievement, which will be an area of focus. For all students, zero achievement points were awarded out of a possible 12. He noted gains made while working with the lowest performing students, with three out of eight possibtle growth points and four out of eight achievement points.
Three out of four points were awarded as well in improving chronic absenteeism, which is at 1.3% of all students and has declined for the second year in a row. Office discipline referrals have also dropped 34% from 2024-2025, 42% from 2023-2024 and over 70% from 2022-2023.
“This is a great testament to the warm and welcoming environment that we try to provide,” Gillen said. “We’ve been working very, very hard to continue to have those numbers go in a positive direction.”
The school is in year two of providing full inclusion and small group sections for special education. Gillen said things have worked and growth has been seen in the lowest performing students.
“I want to pause for a minute and celebrate,” Gillen said. “It’s been a long, hard road to start to see some of those upticks and we’re really starting to see them and I’m really, really happy about that programming that we offer.”
The school also offers targeted after school MCAS tutoring with teachers for specifically identified students to focus on preparing english and math skills. Gillen said there are more than a handful of students that participate.
“I am very proud, we’re working very hard, but I’m very, very proud of the work that our school has undertaken over the course of this year,” Gillen said. “It’s a big middle school, one of the biggest on this side of 495, but with a wonderful, wonderful staff, a wonderful community and folks working very hard to implement not just the new programs, but maintain the level of expectation in terms of how are students interact, how we support them and how we support our community, this year and continuing.”
