Dr. Peter Gillen has been with West Springfield Public Schools since 2005 and will start his new position in Longmeadow July 16.
Reminder Publishing submitted photo
LONGMEADOW — Longmeadow will be seeing a brand new middle school join the town within the next few years, and along with it comes a brand new principal from just across the Connecticut River.
Longmeadow Public Schools Superintendent Marty O’Shea announced that Dr. Peter Gillen, current principal of West Springfield Middle School, has been hired to take on the task of being Longmeadow Middle School’s first principal.
“Peter Gillen was chosen from a highly qualified applicant pool based on his collaborative, student-centered approach to leadership and his deep experience with middle school programming, scheduling, operations and behaviors,” O’Shea said in a press release.
The new school brings together the Glenbrook and Williams Middle School populations, with a start date for Gillen on July 16.
Gillen has bachelor’s degrees in English and secondary education, along with a master of education in education administration from Springfield College. He also received a doctorate of education from William H. Taft University.
He began his career in education in 2004 as a sixth-grade teacher at Springfield’s Forest Park Middle School. He spent one year there before bringing his teaching skills over to West Springfield High School in 2005 as a ninth-grade English teacher and head coach of the cross country and track and field teams.
Gillen then became assistant principal at the middle school in 2009, spending six years in that role until he became principal in 2015. He said he thinks his experience will prove helpful when he starts in Longmeadow.
“Longmeadow is appropriately known for high expectations, supportive parents and a warm and welcoming community,” Gillen said. “I found that to be the experience in West Springfield as well. I think managing the largest middle school this side of [Interstate 495], with just under 1,000 students, translates very well into helping Longmeadow as they build a bigger school.”
He said he hopes to provide broad and engaging opportunities for the students, and that students see the school as a “warm, welcoming, inviting and positive environment where they can explore their different interests, learn their talents and have any opportunity that they like available to them when they leave as eighth graders.”
Gillen said his excitement to join Longmeadow is twofold and that he was drawn to the town because of its great reputation and the opportunity to take part in building a school from the ground up.
“I’m excited about the opportunity to build an incredible program in an incredible school for the community,” Gillen said. “I’m excited to take the two wonderful cultures and experiences that Williams and Glenbrook have and build them into a new Longmeadow Middle School of which the community can be incredibly proud. That’s the first piece.”
He said the second piece of his excitement is the people, stating that “the community has been filled with so many kind and supportive folks.”
“I’m really excited to build those relationships and make those connections,” Gillen said. “It just seems like a natural fit in a really great partnership.”
He also has some parting words for his West Springfield community, adding that it has been a “wonderful, wonderful place” and that he would not have looked to leave unless the opportunity was special, and this one is.
“I would say to parents and the School Committee, administration, staff, teachers, the entire community of West Springfield, it has just been a joy to work with them,” Gillen said. “My experience in West Springfield has been so positive since the beginning. I leave that wonderful town with love and my heart and appreciation for 22 fantastic years. I’m really going to miss that community and those wonderful folks.”
Some of Gillen’s colleagues also had a few messages for him as well from the West Springfield School Committee meeting on June 9.
West Springfield Public Schools Superintendent Stefania Raschilla said Gillen will be missed by the students, staff and families, and School Committee member Colleen Marcus said “he certainly has made a lasting impression on students, families and staff members.
“He will be missed and I wish him the very best of luck in his new position,” Marcus said.
The school is estimated to have a fall 2028 move in, and Gillen will be building the schedule, crafting the course of study and curriculum, supporting the building programmatic merges and will serve on the Middle School Building Committee until then.
