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BEHAVIORAL HEALTH SERVICES LEADERSHIP
Andria Amador, Ed.D., NCSP
Ivonne Borrero, Ph.D., NCSP
Ivonne Borrero, Ph.D., NCSP
Senior Director
Ivonne Borrero, Ph.D., NCSP
Ivonne Borrero, Ph.D., NCSP
Ivonne Borrero, Ph.D., NCSP
Assistant Director
ABOUT US
The Behavioral Health Services (BHS) department provides services and supports to all Boston Public Schools (BPS). In addition to serving as leaders and internal coaches for CBHM, services and supports provided by school psychologists include psycho-educational evaluations and social evaluations; crisis intervention; Student Support Team (SST) work; individual and group counseling; non-IEP counseling and skills groups; teacher, principal, and parent consultation; and professional development. Our goal is to create safe and supportive learning environments in which students may grow and thrive academically, personally, and socially.
Supporting the community
Our department is an integral part of the district crisis team, responsible for supporting school communities following large impact crises. In addition to providing services & supports within all BPS schools, the BHS department works closely with various partners to strengthen behavioral health supports available to our students & schools. This includes our partnership with Boston Children’s Hospital & UMass Boston to implement the Comprehensive Behavioral Health Model, as well as overseeing the Boston School-Based Behavioral Health Collaborative (BSBBHC).
ALIGNED WITH MTSS
CBHM is a multi-tiered system of supports (MTSS) designed to promote students' social, emotional, and behavioral wellbeing. MTSS is a three-tier model of service delivery for educational and behavioral services in a school setting. This model is also often called Response to Intervention (RtI). In BPS, the Academic Achievement Framework (AAF) is a version of RtI focused on students' social and behavioral learning. The Comprehensive Behavioral Health Model (CBHM) is focused on students' social and behavioral learning. The CBHM Lighthouse model (left) shows our systematic process for creating safe and supportive learning environments in which students may grow and thrive academically, personally, and socially.
Our approach
The Comprehensive Behavioral Health Model 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. Highlighting the necessary actions as well as the desired outcomes at the district, school, and student levels, this logic model acts as a roadmap for this important work.
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 are utilized. The BIMAS-2 is a brief, repeatable multi-informant (teachers, parents, self) measure of behavior/social emotional learning skills that is useful for universal screening, progress monitoring, outcome assessment, and program evaluation. The BIMAS-2 operates on a web-based platform with an online Data Management System with dynamic analysis, graphing and reporting options (see report samples below). This allows the manipulation of data in a variety of ways in real time to assist in evidence-based decision-making within an Multi-Tier System of Supports (MTSS) framework.
AWARD WINNING
In 2025, the Behavioral Health Services of BPS were awarded the NASP Excellence in School Psychologist Services Exemplary Award, given to districts that provide evidence of a solid foundation in the implementation of a system-wide and sustainable infrastructure to support students' behavioral health. For perspective, only four districts in the US have achieved this status.