Building a school culture where students feel proud and instruction is the focus are the fundamentals of a positive environment, says the National Association of Secondary School Principals’ 2025 National Principal of the Year Tracie Swilley.
District Administration recently had the opportunity to sit down with Swilley, who leads Fairfield Central High School in South Carolina, to learn more about her leadership philosophy and how other leaders can replicate her successful approach to K12 administration.
Note: The following transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Tell me about Fairfield Central High School. What makes your school so special?
I would say what makes our school special, number one, is we are a Griffin family, and the familial community spirit is what makes our school. So, first and foremost, the culture and climate of Fairfield Central is unmatched. Our students and our staff understand the mission of collaboration and working together because educating young people is never going to be a solo mission. We thrive under our district mantra of excellence through teamwork and so we use all of that.
Our work began with focusing on making certain the culture and climate could produce student growth. So, I’m excited to say for the first time in school history this year, we received a good rating on our school report card. We increased in every area that’s evaluated for last school year and we’re just excited about the growth of our students and staff and this is only the beginning.
You’re known for your success in transforming struggling schools. Take me behind the scenes of your arrival to Fairfield and how you’ve boosted student achievement over the years.
I think, first and foremost, you have to have a culture and climate that is conducive to learning. So, I would encourage every leader, before you jump in and try to focus directly on student achievement, you have to fix the little things. So, it’s just like fundamentals in sports. You can’t start off teaching the kids how to shoot three pointers. You start off with the fundamentals. And so, the fundamentals of a good school environment are making it one where students can be proud, where instruction is the focus and helping students to understand there are no limits to their possibilities.
So, you have to change your mindset. And so, at Fairfield Central, when I came here, the first thing students would say to me, “What do you expect?” And I told them from day one, I said, “I don’t know what was the expectation prior, but I expect greatness.” And so, we had to cultivate an atmosphere of greatness. We started by focusing on our motto of “soaring to greatness.” Griffins believe. Griffins achieve. Griffins succeed. And we had to keep repeating that. We had to make sure kids and staff understood that.
Also, I would say creating a system of support, longevity and being willing to commit. When I arrived, I was the fourth principal that our senior class had experienced. They didn’t trust that I was there for them. The staff was like, “Let’s see how long she’s going to last.”
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So, building an assumption that I was committed to them for the long haul, my first commitment was to see my ninth-grade class graduate. After that, my commitment was to see my son graduate. He graduated last year, and now my daughter is a ninth-grader.
It’s not just students graduating on time. But, you have to work with your clerical staff. You have to work with your community. You have to work with your teachers on understanding what it means for your accountability. Putting systems in place and having open lines of communication was very, very important. To change a culture and a climate, you have to communicate openly and make sure that everybody understands what you’re trying to do. And so, we’ve done that work over the years.
Take me back to the start of the current school year. What were your priorities as principal going into 2024-25?
We’re always centered around our data. I knew that we had made great gains last year. The data showed that already. How do you build upon that? My focus this year was making certain that the time my teachers have together is impactful. So, our focus for this year as a staff is professional learning communities and centering our work on planning for effective lessons and using our data consistently.
We have a data room, and in that data room we not only focus on testing but we focus on attendance. And we focus on progress. So, helping everybody understand we can’t just wait on graduation year. We focus on each grade level and students being on track. Every week, my teachers go in and update our data room. Now, we know which students are failing. You don’t wait until the end of the nine weeks and you miss a student.
I wanted to be more intentional about how we fill the gaps for our students. Early intervention is the best intervention. And I wanted all of our teachers to work together on that because we recognize that students in our buildings have different relationships.
A teacher can now walk into their data room—so can a football coach, so can my wrestling coach, so can my club advisor—and they can see whether their students are being successful. And success for us is matched to the criteria of our school report card. Do you have a C or better in your classroom? If not, we know that that child needs intervention. So, the coach can have a conversation. The club advisor can have a conversation; not just the teacher can have that conversation.