Comprehensive Behavioral Health Model
CBHM is a multi-tiered system of supports created by Behavioral Health Services with Boston Children's Hospital and UMass Boston. Prevention for every student forms the base. Targeted and intensive supports rise from it. Data lights the way.
The Idea
CBHM is based on the logic that the majority of students can and will be successful when provided with evidence-informed instruction and preventative interventions. Appropriate interventions, and the use of data to assess progress, help ensure that students who benefit from progressively more intensive services will not need them over the long term.
The model is built on the premise that by integrating behavioral health services into schools, Boston can create safe and supportive learning environments that optimize academic outcomes and meet the social, emotional, and behavioral health needs of all students. It outlines strategies for the district to provide high-quality behavioral health services that every student can access equitably.
CBHM is aligned with Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS), the three-tier model of service delivery also known as Response to Intervention. It gives BPS school psychologists the structure to practice the expanded role described in the NASP Practice Model and the Massachusetts Safe and Supportive Schools Framework: student-level services such as counseling and individualized interventions, and systems-level strategies such as team facilitation.
Three Tiers
MTSS organizes services across three increasingly intensive levels of support. Tier 1 provides a universal foundation for every student. Tier 2 adds targeted supports for students who need more, and Tier 3 provides intensive, individualized supports for students with the greatest needs. Supports are layered: a student receiving Tier 2 or Tier 3 support continues to benefit from Tier 1.
BPS in 2025–26
15% of school psychologists' service time: direct work such as SEL lessons and classroom support, and indirect work such as team facilitation
BPS in 2025–26
19% of school psychologists' service time: mainly consultation, Student Support Team meetings, and non-IEP counseling
BPS in 2025–26
66% of school psychologists' service time: special education evaluations, IEP and 504 counseling, and crisis response
Tier 1 is designed so that about 80% or more of students are successful with universal supports alone. The student percentages on the cards reflect typical MTSS expectations, while the BPS percentages show how school psychologists distributed their service time in 2025–26. Service-time figures are from the BHS Annual Report 2025–26.
Data Driven
We use data-based decisions to determine which students need which tier of support. Universal screeners and progress-monitoring tools such as the BIMAS-2 (Behavior Intervention Monitoring Assessment System, Second Edition) are used across the district, with screening each fall and spring.
The BIMAS-2 is a brief, repeatable measure of behavior and social emotional learning skills completed by teachers, parents, and students themselves. It is useful for universal screening, progress monitoring, outcome assessment, and program evaluation, and it runs on a web-based platform with real-time analysis, graphing, and reporting, so school teams can make evidence-based decisions within the MTSS framework.
Screening has run every fall and spring since fall 2013, and more than 18,000 ratings are completed by BPS teachers and students each year. In fall 2025, K–12 teachers completed 13,146 ratings, pre-K teachers completed 1,044 ratings, and students aged 12 and older completed 4,522 self-report ratings. These are counts of ratings by informant, not counts of unique students. Screening data is available to every BPS school, along with coaching and professional development from Behavioral Health Services.
Previous years: in 2024–25, 18,370 BIMAS-2 screenings were completed in the fall and 14,084 in the spring, against a district goal of screening 20,000 students.
Share of ratings classified at risk, from 13,146 BIMAS-2 teacher ratings
Share of ratings classified at risk, from 4,522 self-report ratings by students aged 12 and older
Teacher ratings and student self-reports are separate BIMAS-2 measures and are reported separately. Students flagged for thoughts of self-harm receive follow-up from a behavioral health provider within 24 hours. Source: BHS Annual Report 2025–26, Figures 6 and 7.
2025–26 in Numbers
Figures from the department's 2025–26 annual report, compiled from the monthly service data that 104 school psychologists report across the school year.
Source: BHS Annual Report 2025–26 (August 2026), BHS at a Glance and Figure 5, Year-End Report. Counseling cases are weekly caseloads. The 2024–25 figures remain in that year's report.
History
CBHM was developed beginning in 2010 with Boston Children's Hospital and UMass Boston. Over its first decade of implementation, from 2012 to 2022, it was rolled out school by school in yearly cohorts, adding about ten schools a year until it reached 82 of 122 schools and served more than 30,000 students. After the pandemic, the district moved to an integrated MTSS approach, and today the core features of CBHM are available to every Boston public school.
Behavioral Health Services begins developing the Comprehensive Behavioral Health Model with Boston Children's Hospital and the UMass Boston School Psychology Program, with sustained investment from the hospital from 2010 onward.
Boston Public Schools welcomes the first cohort of schools into the Comprehensive Behavioral Health Model, and the yearly cohort rollout begins.
A second cohort of schools joins the model and the CBHM Research Team is established to evaluate it.
The annual Internal Coaching Institute begins, supporting the school-level implementers who lead CBHM in their buildings.
Annual CBHM cohort trainings begin for whole school teams.
More than 17,000 students are screened with the BIMAS-2 universal screener.
The Health Service Psychology doctoral internship program is founded, and the Rennie Center publishes its independent study of CBHM the following spring.
Services pivot to virtual delivery during the COVID-19 closure. In January 2020, NASP first recognizes BHS through its Excellence in School Psychological Services program.
The model marks a decade of implementation. Over its first ten years CBHM reached 82 of 122 schools and served more than 30,000 students.
Core features of CBHM are now available to every Boston public school. NASP grants BHS Exemplary Recognition, held by only four districts in the nation.
BHS launches the Boston School Psychs Podcast in October 2025, sets a 2025–2028 research agenda after its first Research Retreat, and graduates its second cohort of APPIC-matched doctoral interns.
Milestones from the CBHM Annual Report 2021–22 (“Celebrating 10 years”) and the BHS Annual Reports 2024–25 and 2025–26.
Research & Reports
Behavioral Health Services studies its own work. A department research team and its Research & Implementation Committee analyze student outcomes with university and hospital partners, publish what they learn, and report on it every year.
BHS Research Team
The BHS Research Team advances research that strengthens the practice, effectiveness, and impact of school psychologists in the district and beyond. It brings together BHS leadership, district-based practitioners, university trainees, and research partners from universities such as Boston University, Northeastern University, and UMass Boston, hospitals such as Boston Children's Hospital, and professional organizations.
The team's work is guided by the BHS 2025–2028 Research Agenda, set at its inaugural Research Retreat in summer 2025, and reviewed by the Research & Implementation Committee below.
Research & Implementation Committee
The committee analyzes student outcomes to evaluate the effectiveness of CBHM across the district. Its core members come from within BPS and from our community partners, Boston Children's Hospital, UMass Boston, and Boston University, and it welcomes graduate and undergraduate students working on CBHM-related projects. It is one of six department-wide committees, alongside Equity, Multilingual, University Supervision, AI, and Communications.
2025–26 Accomplishments
In 2025–26 the BHS Research Team:
Source: BHS Annual Report 2025–26.
The report commissioned by Mayor Menino. CBHM work across the district is designed to significantly improve many of the outcomes it describes.
The final report of the Massachusetts Behavioral Health and Public Schools Task Force, whose findings drive statewide policy and CBHM work in BPS.
NASP's information sheet on Response to Intervention, the approach CBHM uses to address the behavioral health needs of Boston's children.
Annual Reports
Each report reviews student behavioral health outcomes, the reach of universal screening, and what the department learned. The 2025–26 edition is the latest. The 2024–25 edition was the first full Behavioral Health Services annual report.
