Students across the Public Schools of Brookline (PSB) are regularly asked to fill out surveys–especially at the high school–on topics ranging from mental health and substance use to experience on school sports teams and even what to name the library’s new pet fish.
Among those routinely administered are the Panorama Survey and the Brookline Youth Health Behavior Survey (BYHS). Some students grumble about the personal nature of the questions on these surveys or the frequency of administration: “We’re doing this again?” Some simply opt out.
But district leaders say the Panorama Survey and BYHS shape more than students may realize. Responses help staff support students and guide programming with the aim of improving the physical and mental health of students.
Universal screening: The Panorama Survey
PSB administers universal screening twice per year, in October and March, in the form of a survey widely referred to as the “Panorama Survey” (prior to this year, the survey was administered three times annually). The survey was first implemented five years ago for students in 3rd through 12th grade as staff grappled with high rates of post-pandemic student depression and absenteeism. It measures emotional regulation, pleasant and unpleasant feelings, school belonging and supportive relationships. The survey is not anonymous and students can choose to opt out.
79 percent of PSB students in 3rd grade through 12th grade completed the Panorama Survey during its most recent administration in October. Senior Director of Clinical Services and Social-Emotional Learning for PSB, Matthew DuBois, is at the forefront of survey data analysis.
“When we think about mental health, we can get into this bad place where we can just be responsive, meaning that we tend not to do well when we first become interested in kids’ mental health when they are [already] presenting with anxiety and depression,” DuBois said. “A big part of why we do the screening is that early on if there are any challenges that you’re having, we want to pick those up.”
Administrators, deans, counselors and, in some cases, teachers, can access the responses of individual students through Open Architects, a software platform that compiles and analyzes the survey data (other student information, including attendance and MCAS scores, also feeds into Open Architects). Survey responses are used both at the individual level and in aggregate to support students.
At the individual level, staff use responses to identify students who may need additional support and connect them with clinical staff or other supportive adults in the school. This can be student-driven, as the survey includes a “hand raise” feature that allows students to request follow up with a staff member; or it can result from a certain caliber of response even if the student does not self-identify as wanting to check in with an adult. Alexia Thomas, Coordinator of Guidance, said that she typically follows up with five or six students per her caseload of two hundred.
“Kids who answer in certain ways for certain questions get flagged, and then all the guidance counselors and social workers and deans get a list of all those kids, so we know [a student] got flagged on a question, and [they] want someone to check in,” Thomas said.
Panorama Survey data is also used to better understand the strengths and needs of students at the school and grade-wide level and thereby inform larger initiatives.
One of the most concrete examples of this was the post-COVID addition of nine more social workers to PSB. DuBois said that the increase was driven by high levels of depression, anxiety and feelings of isolation among students coming out of the pandemic, which the Panorama Survey helped to identify. The new positions were originally funded through the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), which provided financial support to education agencies, among other widespread stimulus, to support pandemic recovery. As ARPA funds are no longer available to schools, the positions are now funded as part of the district’s regular budget. DuBois said that understanding the needs of students has been key in sustaining these positions.
“As we go into budgeting, being able to say ‘here’s the impact of our programming,’ has been able to help us support staffing,” DuBois said.
According to DuBois, data from the Panorama Survey has also been used to expand social and emotional education for students in grades K-5, as well as build relationships with community partners who can provide outside-of-school counseling services for students, such as Cartwheel Care. Additionally, he said data has driven the creation of small group interventions for struggling students, such as spaces students can go to during lunch to connect with peers.
Social worker Paul Epstein said that some might question the personal nature of universal screening.
“I understand that concern,” Epstein said. “[But] I really feel from my social work point of view that it’s a very helpful tool. It’s that double edged, two-fold benefit: the large view of the entire student body and then that micro scale, one kid, one response. It’s the combination of those two things that I find to be a really useful tool.”
The Brookline Youth Health Survey (BYHS)
Another important survey administered in PSB is the BYHS. The BYHS was designed by PSB and the Massachusetts Department of Public Health and is a Brookline-adapted version of a nationally-administered survey developed by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention which measures “health-related behaviors and experiences that can lead to death and disability among youth and adults.” Unlike the Panorama Survey, the BYHS is fully anonymous and specifically addresses risk-taking behavior. It is administered every other year to students in grades six through twelve during advisory or health class; the most recent administration being spring 2025.
Due to its anonymous nature, the BYHS reflects trends across Brookline and responses are not linked back to individual students. Data has been used to inform a variety of initiatives.
For example, the 2025 BYHS, which DuBois presented to the School Committee in January, shows an increase in vaping among high school students compared to 2023. Yet, the survey also shows that students perceive vape use among peers to be higher than reality (the BYHS asks about perceptions of substance use). Gabrielle Dean, coordinator of Brookline’s Behavioral Health Intervention and Prevention program, said that this disconnect can lead to the normalization of risky behaviors.
In response to these findings, Peer Leadership–a class at the high school that designs and implements school-wide prevention strategies pertaining to the social, emotional and physical health of students–recently launched a “positive community norms” campaign focused on vape use. According to Dean, this type of public health campaign aims to change attitudes by sharing factual data that dispels harmful misconceptions.
“What happens is that kids start thinking that [substance use such as vaping] is much more common than it is, because they start seeing it, so they figure ‘it’s not as big a deal if I vape too,” Dean said. “But it turns out that 5 percent of freshmen have vaped, and even by the time people leave school, most kids haven’t even tried it. So, we’re just trying to get the information out there based on the facts rather than what people perceive.”
Building the Queer Student Program
Survey data has also been used to expand the Queer Student Program (QSP). The QSP is a support network at the high school that offers programming for LGBTQIA+ identifying students. Programming includes a specialized advisory and/or wellness class students can enroll in, clubs like the Gender Sexuality Alliance (GSA), and social activities and spaces such as an overnight retreat to the Berkshires in the fall and the Queer Student Union drop-in space (a fully-staffed lounge space for LQBTQ-identifying students). According to Kate Leslie, who teaches American history at the high school and is a teacher-leader of the QSP, there are 130 students involved in some branch of the program per week.
Before the creation of the QSP, which began receiving funding from the Innovation Fund three years ago, programming for the LGBTQIA+ community at the high school was limited to the GSA. However, Leslie said that staff could tell more needed to be done to support LGBTQIA+ students, which survey data quantified. Seven percent of high school students identified as transgender or non-binary and 23 percent identified as gay, lesbian, bisexual or queer on the 2025 BYHS (the BYHS explicitly asks students if they identify as LGBTQIA+).
“What was really helpful was using both of these surveys [the BYHS and Panorama survey] to quantify that and to be able to tell folks who might not work with LGBTQIA+ students some hard numbers of, ‘hey, we’re not talking about serving 5 percent of the student population, we’re talking about serving 25 percent of the student population,’” Leslie said.
Data from the BYHS reveals that LQBTQIA+ students tend to report poorer mental health than the student average. The 2025 BYHS found that gay and lesbian students were four times more likely than their heterosexual peers to report persistent sadness and hopelessness (44 percent compared to 11 percent), and transgender and non-binary students were five times more likely to have considered suicide than cisgender peers (32 percent and 39 percent respectively, compared to five percent of males and seven percent of females).
According to Leslie, the Panorama Survey, which does not ask students if they identify as LGBTQIA+, paints a similar picture. Leslie aggregates the individual responses of students in the QSP (who are known to identify as LGBTQIA+) so that she can cross reference BYHS data with Panorama Survey data and confirm BYHS trends regarding the high school LGBTQIA+ community. Leslie said that her work has shown that LGBTQIA+-identifying students tend to report a sense of school belonging and self efficacy below the student average.
“[Data] is part of how we’ve been able to argue that LGBTQIA+ students still have a lower sense of belonging in the school than the general student population, and have certain social emotional struggles,” Leslie said. “I’ve been able to say, ‘Guess what? LGBTQIA+ students are another group in this school that feel a lower sense of belonging to the whole’, and therefore we need to think about what that means for our classroom environment, what that means for added supports and what that means for programming.”
Leslie said that she has been pushing the district to consider adding a question to the Panorama Survey that asks students to self-identify as part of the LGBTQIA+ community.
“Then it would allow those of us who use the data to not just pull [from] people who are explicitly in a queer advisory [or other QSP program], but to be able to use the broader data from students who are also LGBTQIA+ and might not be as involved in the QSP program as a whole,” Leslie said.
The bottom line
DuBois said that despite current misinformation about universal mental health screening in schools, the Panorama Survey is in no way diagnostic, nor are individual responses tracked over time. Since its inception, he said there has been positive growth in areas such as attendance and rates of depression.
“We’ve seen more students describe having a stronger sense of belonging; more students saying they have a safe adult. We’ve seen fewer students reporting heightened anxiety and depression,” DuBois said. “As somebody who doesn’t work directly with students, one thing I’m thinking about is ‘is our programming meeting the needs of students overall?’ So seeing that growth over time has been really helpful.”
Both DuBois and Thomas emphasized the importance of student participation and honesty. Thomas said that while surveys may feel tedious or intrusive, they are highly beneficial to staff and students.
“We try to emphasize that we actually do use this information to get you all resources,” Thomas said. “I think it does drive a lot of work we do here, including curriculum, instruction, planning and social and emotional support.”
