Meadow Brook Elementary School Principal Elaine Santaniello presents end-of-year data.
Photo credit: ELCAT01028
EAST LONGMEADOW — Elementary schools in East Longmeadow are closing out the 2025-2026 meeting most of their goals across attendance and academic growth and achievement.
Principals from Mountain View, Mapleshade and Meadow Brook elementary schools presented the end-of-year date to showcase percentage points for each goal at the School Committee meeting on June 22.
Meadow Brook Principal Renee Lodi and Assistant Principal Kathleen Leydon kicked off the presentations.
The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education had a 95% or greater attendance goal for the 2025-2026 year, and Meadow Brook surpassed it with a 95.2% rate. Lodi said the school set a “pretty lofty goal” of 5% chronic absenteeism but finished the year with a 7% rate, a 0.7% increase from the March mid-year report.
“I think a number of things contributed to that,” Lodi said. “When I was reflecting back on this, we had 28 students in that chronic absenteeism group, eight of those 28 had known health issues impacting attendance. Of those eight, two were in home or hospitalization settings … Another is a student on an IEP attending school on a modified school schedule, so those three things had a pretty significant impact on our attendance rates this year.”
The school sends home monthly letters to families with five or more absences and continues to communicate attendance expectations, make referrals to the district care coordinator for students with higher absenteeism rates and state agencies as warranted.
The school utilizes the Devereaux Student Strength Assessment to support students in making academic, social, emotional and behavioral progress and helps find students that may need additional support.
The fall data showed 6% of students needing additional support, 79% were in the “typical range” and 15% were in the social and emotional strength range. The end of year data shows a 2% increase to 8% needing support, but a 13% increase to 28% in the strength range.
Kindergarten students underwent a universal screener for number sense to assess how the youngest learners develop foundational number concepts, such as counting, comparing and combinations. Around 84% of students showed proficiency.
The school also met their first- and second-grade typical growth goal for math with 66%. The stretch growth fell just short at 33%, 2% less than the 35% goal. Typical growth in iReady is average national progress, while stretch growth sets higher growth expectations for grade level proficiency.
Sixty-eight percent of students are performing at or above grade level, a 54% increase from the beginning of the year. Only 1% of students are performing below grade level, a 15% decrease.
Mountain View Principal Elaine Santaniello said the school exceeded its 95% attendance goal with a 96.3% rate and chronic absenteeism is at 3.7%. Ninety-four percent of students said they feel happy and welcome at school.
Mountain View’s iReady data shows an increase of student reading achievement at or above grade level, starting the year with 38% and finishing with 63%. Math achievement began at 34% at or above grade level and ended with 69%.
Santaniello said all three grade levels are placed in the high performance, high growth quartile for reading with 67% typical growth and 37% stretch growth. Third- and fourth-grade students are in the high performance, high growth quartile for math while fifth-grade students placed in the high performance, low growth quartile.
“Our goal was 65% of students reaching typical and 35% reaching stretch,” Santaniello said. “We were at 54% typical and 27% stretch, so this is the area that we need to continue to work on next year.”
She added that losing the math interventionist position could be a reason for not meeting the goal because of the number of students who were receiving additional support in math in previous grades. The school also lost the Gifted and Talented Enrichment Program for math, which Santaniello said included a lot of math enrichment.
Students, families and staff underwent wellness and climate screenings as well to foster an inclusive and supportive culture and climate. Ninety-five percent reported they are happy, feel safe, respected and treated fairly. Ninety-five percent of students also reported they have at least one trusted adult at school.
Mapleshade Principal Conor Martin was unable to attend the meeting, so Superintendent Gordon Smith and Assistant Superintendent for Teaching and Learning Heather Brown presented the data in his place.
The school closed the year out with a 95.6% daily attendance rate. The typical and stretch growth goals for iReady reading were set at 70% and 40% and for 65% and 35% for math. Third-grade reading and fifth-grade math, the only iReady data supplied in the presentation, exceeded each goal.
Around 90% of students reported they have at least one adult to talk to at school, 93.5% said they keep trying when school work is hard and 86.4% said they feel safe at school.
