Westerville City Schools presented detailed plans Tuesday for implementing a multi-tiered system of supports, or MTSS, across preschool through 12th grade, saying the framework will be used to align instruction, social-emotional supports and targeted interventions.

"MTSS stands for multi tiered systems of support and it is our way to provide support to students who have an academic, behavioral, or social emotional need," said Kate Toma, a district staff member who led the presentation. Toma emphasized that MTSS is intended to serve "every classroom, every student, every single day," including students needing enrichment and those who need intensive interventions.

Toma described a layered approach with Tier 1 universal instruction, Tier 2 targeted interventions for roughly 15 percent of students and Tier 3 intensive individualized supports. The district is embedding micro professional development on universal design for learning (UDL), adding MTSS coaches in buildings, and convening district MTSS leadership teams to coordinate preschool-to-12th-grade work.

Examples cited by presenters include Read 180 as a targeted reading intervention, morning meetings in K5 classrooms to build community and social-emotional skills, and a plan to offer double-dip interventions (teacher instruction plus an intervention specialist) where research supports accelerated learning. Toma said the districts strategy includes progress-monitoring ("small data") for interventions and periodic review of state assessments and achievement trends ("big data").

Board members asked how qualitative social-emotional data are collected; Toma said qualitative evidence includes counselor reports, teacher observations, behavior-referral narratives and student interviews. She added that elementary teachers receive ten-minute monthly micro-PD sessions with time to collaborate on implementation.

Toma said the MTSS rollout will continue in phased steps: build academic frameworks, add behavioral and social-emotional supports, and then focus year three on enhancing supports for special populations such as students with disabilities, English learners and gifted students. "We are working to have those pieces and parts at every tier across PK to 12," she said.

District leaders said early classroom-level anecdotes show students making specific gains (a Genoa Middle School student who "finally get[s] division") and teachers reporting students who "claim their own success story" after tiered interventions. The presentation noted that full implementation will take multiple years and requires sustained coaching, collaboration and staff time.

The board and staff agreed the MTSS framework is complementary to the districts Portrait of a Graduate and that successful scaling will depend on continued investment in coaching and schedules that allow teachers collaborative problem-solving time.