He graduated from Eastern Connecticut State University, where he was a member of the school's basketball team.
[4] In August 1981, Spillane was hired to replace the fired Robert Coldwell Wood as superintendent of the Boston Public Schools.
[5] During his tenure in Boston, Spillane had to make budget cuts due to shortfalls caused by Proposition 2½.
[6] In 1982, Judge W. Arthur Garrity Jr. ended his court's monitoring of desegregation in Boston Public Schools.
The program, which was considered a model for other districts, was suspended in 1992 due to budget cuts and eliminated the following year.
[8] Spillane also gained attention for lengthening the school day for secondary students by adding a half-hour and a seventh class period.
Spillane reduced the pupil to teacher ratio in majority-minority elementary schools from 25 to 1 to 15 to 1 in an effort to improve academic performance.
[13][14][15][16] In 1996, the Fairfax County School Board voted to give Spillane a one-year contract extension through the middle of 1998.
In 2006 he became the vice president of the Center for Education at CAN Corp. Spillane died on July 18, 2015, from complications of pulmonary disease at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.