← ScholarPath Systems All resources
New · Free Resource

The End-of-Year MTSS Transition Checklist

Close out this year. Set up next year. In 30 minutes.

MTSS doesn't end in June — it gets picked up again in the fall. This is the checklist I wish I'd had every May: two pages, built to make sure the good work you did this year actually carries forward instead of evaporating over summer.

Most end-of-year checklists miss the real problem.

They give you compliance boxes. File audits. "Did you submit the form?" questions. Useful, in a narrow way — but they don't protect the work.

The real risk at end-of-year isn't whether paperwork got filed. It's whether the system you built this year — the intervention menu that finally worked, the screening cadence the team agreed on, the carryover students who need continuity — makes it to September intact. Or whether everyone arrives back in August and rebuilds from scratch because no one captured what was decided.

That's what this checklist is for. It's the two-page version of the conversation I wish every MTSS team had in May, before the last day of school.

Two pages. Twenty-plus items per page. 30 minutes total.

Work through it alone if you're the coordinator, or together in your last MTSS team meeting of the year. The structure is deliberate: Page 1 closes out what happened, Page 2 sets up what's coming.

Page 1

Close Out This Year

The system-level work that makes this year actually end — not just run out of days.

  • Intervention cases & exit status
  • Data & progress monitoring closeout
  • Team documentation & decisions
  • Family communication for Tier 2/3 students
  • Records & handoff to next year's staff

Page 2

Set Up Next Year

The forward-looking work that prevents September chaos — and protects the good work you did.

  • Carryover students & continuity plans
  • System changes (named, not hoped for)
  • Team membership & roles for next year
  • Professional development needs
  • Calendar anchors locked in

Ready to close out this year properly?

Two pages. Thirty minutes. No email required. Take it to your last MTSS team meeting of the year, or work through it yourself on a Friday afternoon.

What this checklist deliberately doesn't do.

This stays at the system level — the team-facing, whole-school work. It doesn't walk you through closing each student's file: the data entry, the decision log, the parent communication history, the handoff notes. That's where most of May's hours actually go, and a checklist isn't really the right tool for that work.

If you want to go deeper on the underlying "is our MTSS system actually working" question, the Tier 1 Assessment is the 30–90 minute diagnostic built for exactly that conversation.

A note on the per-student closeout work

If the per-student file work is what's eating your May — rebuilding spreadsheets, reconstructing communication histories, writing handoff summaries from scratch — the honest question is whether the underlying system is the problem. ScholarPath Intervention Management was built to automate that layer. Data summaries, decision logs, communications, and next-year handoffs are generated from the student record, not reconstructed in a binder.

Not a pitch. A reference point if the May work feels heavier than it should.