Enabling Integrated Student Supports in Independent Schools

Many factors influence how students experience school and whether they struggle or thrive. Family issues, mental health concerns, sense of belonging, resilience, and more can impact academic performance and social-emotional development. Treating symptoms such as low grades without understanding and addressing their root causes is likely to be either suboptimal or ineffective.

Over the past decade, many schools have adopted a Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS) framework for identifying and prioritizing support needs. Supports are grouped into three tiers with interventions available to all students classified as “tier 1” while supports and interventions for students with a higher level of need classified as “tier 2” and those corresponding to the most intensive needs classified as “tier 3.” Schools often set their own definitions of each tier, determined in part by the needs of their student populations as a whole. When it’s implemented well, an MTSS framework can be a helpful approach to organizing support activities that address root causes of students’ struggles and deliver measurable improvements in both well-being and academic performance. Since academic issues may have non-academic causes, doing MTSS well means connecting the dots between academic and support functions within a school as well as engaging all stakeholders including faculty, counselors, administrators, families, and (especially in middle and high school years) even students themselves.

On the surface, independent schools may appear to have less of a need for student support services than public schools. While many independent schools have selective admission policies and serve academically-talented students, even students who thrive academically may struggle personally or socially or may require additional support in some subjects than in others. In addition, effective student support services can be critical to ensuring students feel a sense of safety, belonging, and satisfaction at school – which can be key to meeting retention targets. Even two or three students who choose to leave can create a significant budget and recruiting challenge in schools where a single student’s tuition may equate to as much as half or more of a faculty member’s salary. So, both for education and administrative reasons, independent schools are increasingly looking for ways to make support services broader, more effective, and more integrated across academic and non-academic domains.

In early 2025, Intellispark hosted a webinar titled A Recipe for Integrated Student Support which explored how two independent schools were tackling the need for greater coordination of support with dual goals of improving student well-being and increasing academic success. This year, we’re excited to launch a series of short case studies in partnership with four of our member schools. Collectively these schools are doing amazing work for kids through compelling programming and pedagogy. Their work informs our work, helping us to crystalize what we think is a unique mix of technical capabilities in Intellispark Pro and Intellispark Plus that make implementing new practices easier for schools that want to lead the way in integrated student support.

The Lang School, which serves nearly 100 twice-exceptional students on their campus in New York City, employs an “individualized, strengths-based instructional model [that] requires a lot of collaboration from the adults,” according to Jeffrey Galaise, assistant head of school. Since educators are often working directly with students, much of that collaboration needs to be asynchronous. Before implementing Intellispark Plus, collaboration frequently happened over e-mail and text messages or in Google Docs – which can be clumsy and difficult to handle securely. Intellispark Plus provides a shared workspace that’s designed for secure sharing of information and has become a key tool the school uses to foster close collaboration among staff members. 

Bridget Londay, who headlined our webinar last year and who has been building a national model for independent school wellness programs at The Packer Collegiate Institute in Brooklyn, New York, leads a large, interdisciplinary team of counselors, nurses, learning support specialists, and mental health professionals as Head of Health and Student Services. With more than 1,000 students, Packer’s support teams serve a large and diverse population. Intellispark Plus has become an important tool for improving connectivity among faculty, administrators, Bridget’s team, and others in the school community who work together to address support issues quickly before they become larger concerns.

With a unique program spanning arts and academics, as well as a population of both day and boarding students, Walnut Hill School for the Arts in suburban Boston, Massachusetts is a complex environment where student support runs 24x7. Intellispark Plus has helped Colin Meiselman, associate director of student life for student support, and Maddie Warlan, director of counseling and wellness, to help arts and academic faculty, administrators, and dorm leaders work more closely together. Any concerns that crop up can be passed along to those who will see students later in the day or evening, providing a more cohesive and supportive environment.

Eva Ostrowsky, director of counseling and wellness at The Hun School of Princeton in New Jersey, chose Intellispark Plus in part to bring greater focus and efficiency to the school’s weekly student support meetings. Because Intellispark Plus is designed as a schoolwide platform rather than a point solution for clinicians, it has become a key resource for grade-level deans as well as counselors, nurses, academic advisors, and faculty. The Student Hub in Intellispark Plus gives every staff member who works with a particular student a clear picture of how that student is experiencing school and a list of any on-going support activities. 

Our work with Lang, Packer, Walnut Hill, Hun, and hundreds of other schools across the U.S., has helped us refine these core beliefs that drive everything we produce. We believe:

• Student well-being and academic performance are inextricably linked. As Yale professor of child psychiatry James Comer wrote two decades ago, “no significant learning occurs without significant relationship.” Healthy relationships among students and between students and educators lead to a sense of psychological safety and belonging and create the conditions that allow learning to flourish.
• Student success is fundamentally a team sport. Helping students succeed requires close collaboration among all of the key stakeholders at school and home.
• An effective student support platform must be a full-school solution. A support platform must be designed to connect counselors, teachers, administrators, students, and families in ways that feel natural to these disparate audiences. Point solutions that may serve the needs of one audience lead to silos that limit results.

We hope you find these case studies as helpful in shaping your own program as we did, and we welcome your thoughts on how we can collectively help more students thrive.

To learn more about Intellispark, please contact us, or feel free to reach out to any of your colleagues from the schools we profiled. We look forward to collaborating with you!