West Springfield School Committee listens to School Superintendent Stefania Raschilla provide updates for the 2025-26 school year.
Photo credit: West Side Media
WEST SPRINGFIELD — With students returning to school, the West Springfield School Committee were provided a few updates during its Sept. 9 meeting from Superintendent Stefania Raschilla.
Raschilla is starting her third school year as superintendent and stated, “It was our smoothest opening in the three years that I’ve been here.”
The School Committee also discussed at its past meeting about changes to three of the elementary schools regarding the traffic flow during drop off and pick up.
Raschilla said, “After a day, any issues that we had on day one were alleviated. The traffic pattern is much better. Buses are able to get in and out of those schools, buses are able to arrive on time and get to their next school on time and that’s an area that we really struggled with last year so these changes that have been made were pretty successful, but we continue to look at it to see if there’s any other improvements that can be made.”
Raschilla also provided some enrollment numbers for the 2025-26 school year as of Sept. 3.
The total enrollment is 3,854 students, which is 112 fewer students than last year’s October report.
Raschilla said one of the largest contributing factors in the decrease are students listed as McKinney-Vento. The district has gone from 190 McKinney-Vento students in the 2024-25 school year down to 36 students for this school year.
The school district will provide another enrollment update on Oct. 1 as students are actively still being enrolled.
West Springfield’s superintendent also gave a YONDR pouch update at the middle school after the implementation began at the start of this school year.
Raschilla said she talked to West Springfield Middle School Principal Dr. Peter Gillen who stated, “So far, the implementation of the YONDR pouches have run seamlessly. They have stations at the front of each pod for arrival and dismissal, and they haven’t had any delays in students unlocking or locking their pouch.”
Gillen also added that students and parents have responded positively over the first few days and have only had one student with their phone out.
The School Committee then discussed a proposal to increase its substitute paraprofessional rate from $90 a day to $100 a day.
West Springfield School Chief Financial Officer Adam Tarquini stated that this increase would “better align with the new collective bargaining agreement that we have with the paras and to hopefully attract and retain subs for those positions.”
The School Committee unanimously approved the increase.
