Enhancing MTSS with AI: How Boston Public Schools is Leading the Way with Panorama Solara

Boston Public Schools (BPS) has been a long-standing partner of Panorama Education since 2013, using Panorama Surveys & Engagement and Panorama Student Success to support its MTSS. As an early district to implement Panorama Solara, BPS is now harnessing AI to streamline intervention planning, enhance educator efficiency, and drive data-informed decision-making across its 117 schools.

Sarah Jay, Executive Director of Equitable MTSS at BPS, shared how Solara is helping the district align its MTSS framework with real-time student data, supporting both educators and students in meaningful ways.

Challenge: Scaling MTSS with Consistency and Precision

• BPS needed a way to implement consistent yet flexible MTSS practices across 117 schools.

• Educators were working hard to create effective intervention plans but needed better tools for SMART goal-setting, tracking, and follow-through.

• Leaders wanted AI to enhance decision-making while keeping teachers in control.

Solution: AI-Powered MTSS with Panorama Solara

• Solara integrates with BPS data and materials, ensuring interventions are personalized and aligned.

• AI helps educators write SMART goals, select progress monitoring tools, and streamline intervention plans.

• Solara reduces administrative burden, giving teachers more time to focus on student support.

Impact: A New Level of AI-Enhanced Decision-Making

• Educators now create stronger, more actionable MTSS plans with AI-powered goal-setting.

• Data-driven insights help leaders refine interventions and ensure all students receive support.

• Stronger MTSS execution—AI improves goal-setting, follow-through, and system-wide reflection.

Challenge: Scaling MTSS With Consistency and Precision 

BPS serves students across 117 schools, each with unique needs and resources. With 149 MTSS coordinators—a stipend role filled by social workers, psychologists, instructional coaches, and teachers—one of the district’s biggest challenges has been ensuring consistency in MTSS implementation while allowing for flexibility based on each school’s context.

MTSS Coordinators face a major challenge: lack of time, as they juggle multiple roles and responsibilities. As the primary leaders ensuring that intervention plans are consistently and accurately documented in Panorama Success, they must also adapt processes to fit each school's unique context.

“The context of each school is slightly different,” Jay explained. “We needed a way to create MTSS systems that match the needs of each school and take advantage of the resources and expertise in each building.”

Another persistent challenge has been ensuring that intervention plans are fully executed and evaluated.

“A challenge that we have is that often our school-based educators will start a plan, and then that’s sort of the end of it,” Jay noted. “MTSS coordinators are constantly nudging teams to close out plans, but sometimes the goals written are too vague—so was it met? Who knows?”

The district saw AI as an opportunity to streamline intervention planning, improve follow-through, and strengthen data-driven decision-making across schools.

Solution: AI-Powered MTSS With Panorama Solara 

Panorama Solara offers BPS a secure, data-driven AI solution that enhances their MTSS framework by automating time-consuming processes and ensuring data-backed intervention strategies.

One of the most significant advantages of Solara is its ability to pull directly from BPS’s own student data and district resources, ensuring AI-driven recommendations are aligned with district-specific needs. Solara also integrates seamlessly with Student Success, Panorama’s MTSS platform. 

“Solara is a game changer,” said Jay. “In our primary grades, we have district-created resources that Solara can ingest, allowing us to use it for intervention planning, instructional tools, and program development in a way that’s actually specific to the BPS context.”

This level of customization and alignment with district priorities is what makes Solara stand out from generic AI tools. Solara supports BPS educators by:

• Aligning AI with District Materials: The district can upload its resources and scope and sequence, ensuring AI-generated recommendations align with BPS standards.

• Creating Stronger MTSS Plans: Solara helps educators write SMART goals for interventions, ensuring measurable outcomes and clearer evaluation criteria.

• Reducing Administrative Burden: AI-assisted tools guide teachers in selecting appropriate progress monitoring strategies and refining intervention plans.

• Enhancing Communication: Solara helps MTSS coordinators follow up with school leaders and educators on open intervention plans, reducing incomplete or stagnant cases.

Jay underscored how this alignment allows Solara to enhance, rather than replace, teacher expertise: “We’re not just saying, Differentiate this lesson for me or What is a good intervention? We’re actually using a secure system with data we have so laboriously collected to inform our planning.”

Impact: A New Level of AI-Enhanced Decision-Making

Beyond supporting teachers and interventionists, Solara is helping BPS refine its approach to MTSS at the systems level by improving the quality and execution of intervention plans.

"We’ve used Solara to write a tool that helps our MTSS coordinators support school-based educators. It guides them in writing SMART goals that are aligned to the actual intervention they intend to give." Jay explained. “It also helps them determine the right progress monitoring tools. Solara is not just a tool—it’s becoming a driver of higher-quality intervention planning and a way for us to reflect on whether we’re truly meeting student needs.”

Solara includes ready-made prompts and tools. Districts can easily configure tools to fit unique school needs.

Additionally, Solara is helping the district address a common pain point—communication and follow-through.

“Even something as simple as sending a targeted email to a school leader or MTSS champion—reminding them that a plan needs to be closed or where they’re at in the process—can be improved with Solara,” Jay said. “Sometimes people respond better to an email from a colleague rather than an automated one, and Solara can help facilitate that.”

Panorama as a Thought Partner in AI Implementation 

As BPS navigates the integration of AI into its MTSS framework, Panorama has played a key role as a thought partner in ensuring AI adoption is intentional, effective, and human-centered. BPS worked closely with Panorama’s professional development team, who helped incorporate AI training into the district’s rollout of Solara.

“We were already thinking in a parallel way with Panorama—that we have to start first by defining AI and getting people to really know what it is (and isn’t) and how to best use it,” Jay explained. “The MTSS coordinators who have been the first to use Solara are really excited about the possibilities.”

In addition to supporting adoption, Panorama has helped guide educators in AI literacy, ensuring they understand how to craft effective prompts and critically assess AI-generated responses. Panorama provides a comprehensive professional development pathway to help school and district teams understand AI and integrate Solara into daily workflows. The professional development team is composed of former educators and administrators—including BPS's partner, Georgia Bambrick. 

“When Georgia (Professional Learning Director at Panorama) talks to us about how to use AI, she introduces the three C’s: create, check if it’s correct, and consider the context,” Jay shared. “That part of our partnership has been really valuable because it feels like she’s supporting us in building an AI mindset even as we adopt the tool and start to use it in our schools.”

Scaling MTSS Success With AI: What's Next for BPS?

With an AI policy in development and ongoing professional learning around AI literacy, BPS is laying the groundwork for sustainable and responsible AI use. Looking ahead, BPS aims to explore how AI can better address high-achieving students’ needs and refine intervention strategies.

For district leaders considering AI adoption, Jay emphasized starting with a clear problem statement and focusing on human-centered AI implementation:

• Identify your use cases. What’s the problem you’re trying to solve?

• Ensure AI supports educators, not replaces them. Use AI tools to honor the humans in education—the students and the educators doing the hard work.

• Invest in professional learning. Think about how your use of AI centers humans rather than technology.

Boston Public Schools: A Model for AI-Enhanced MTSS

Boston Public Schools is demonstrating how AI, when used strategically, can empower educators to focus on what matters most: supporting students. With Panorama Solara, BPS is building a more efficient, data-driven, and human-centered MTSS framework—one that honors the expertise of educators while ensuring every student gets the right support at the right time.

“We have to put the ‘teach’ in teacher,” Jay said. “Solara is giving our educators the tools they need so they can truly focus on their students.”

Ready to see how AI can work for your district? Schedule a of Panorama Solara and discover how AI can streamline intervention planning, enhance data-driven decision-making, and empower educators at every level.”