Southwestern Central School staff members are pictured at the Solution Tree PLC summit in Rochester. Submitted photo

Since a partnership began between the Southwestern School District and a professional learning company, district officials have noted incredible results.

As a result of the district’s successful implementation of so many of the organization’s recommendations, along with the noticeable increase in student achievement, the learning company has recognized the district on their website.

Solution Tree has partnered with the school for about three years now, and is an organization that is dedicated to raising the bar for student achievement. The group does this through educational resources, various events, and tools or strategies for teachers or administrators. The organization did a significant amount of work this past summer, hosting courses and providing information to help better prepare teachers for this school year. With the continuation of unique strategic developments for the district, this positive progress will hopefully continue.

“We gathered some data for them, we did some interviews. Then they published that in a document that’s available in a PDF,” said Superintendent Molly Moore. “So it’s a way for them to advertise the success of districts that are utilizing professional learning communities. For us it was a way to, you know, just see the progress that we’ve made.”

In the article on Solution Tree’s site, it begins by discussing the challenges that the district was facing when the partnership initially began. The article noted that the district began to struggle in the years immediately after the COVID-19 pandemic. With so much adjustment for students around this time some grade levels and subjects began to see student proficiency scores as low as 50%. The article noted that many teachers felt, at the time, as if very little progress was able to be made due to how unstable and inconsistent collaborative efforts were.

The district began to implement the use of Solution Tree during the summer of 2023, through the formation of a guiding coalition. The goal of this coalition was to establish goals for the district and see to it that an effective model for collaboration was set for each grade level. Some immediate changes that began in the 2023-2024 school year included the first district-wide book study, the use of online learning platform Global PD Teams, and the district’s attendance of the PLC at Work Institute in Rochester. The 2024-2025 school saw even more unique development ideas brought into the district, one of which was a two-day collaborative workshop that taught staff in response to intervention. This included learning how tiers one, two, and three supports can work together and schedule redesign to implement daily intervention blocks for students. The 2025-2026 school year saw more literature added to the district’s resources, and continued to advance on many of the concepts that had already been implemented.

The article noted the measurable difference that can be seen in the district’s student proficiency since the implementation of PLC at Work and RTI at Work. The article stated that ELA proficiency scores for sixth graders rose from 36% in 2024 to 68% in 2025. This growth surpasses the state average for the 2024-2025 school year by about 33%. Additionally, the article stated that math scores for students have risen 10.5%, and that science proficiency in grades five through eight has gone from 50% to 54% in that same time. The article also noted the generally improved collaboration in the district now, stating that staff analyzes data together and frequently collaborate.