From Disconnected Systems to Districtwide MTSS: How Comal ISD Reduced IEP Update Time From 45 Minutes to 3 Minutes

Comal Independent School District serves more than 30,000 students across 38 campuses in Central Texas, and has partnered with Panorama since 2025. Comal’s campuses include elementary, middle, and high schools, and the district welcomes nearly 1,000 new students each year. As Comal worked to strengthen its districtwide MTSS framework, leaders needed a more consistent way to access student data, manage interventions, and meet state documentation requirements across a large and growing district.

Challenges

Across Comal ISD, student information and intervention documentation were scattered across spreadsheets and disconnected systems. Educators often had to move between sources just to assemble the same picture of a student. Mandi Chapman, Comal’s Director of MTSS & Section 504, described the lack of alignment plainly: “We had places admin would go, we had places teachers would go, but nobody went to the same place to see the same thing.” For a district spread across 38 campuses, that made it harder for teams to start support planning.

Comal wasn’t starting from scratch with MTSS, though. Staff were already supporting students across academics, behavior, and life skills, but those efforts varied from school to school. The challenge was creating a clearer districtwide approach to interventions and progress monitoring.

State requirements added another layer of documentation. Under Texas House Bill 1416, Comal had to track Accelerated Instruction Plans (AIP) and instructional minutes across the district. Responsibility for this had previously sat with the accountability team but was shifting to MTSS, bringing AIP documentation and progress monitoring into the team’s work across campuses.

At the same time, changes to Texas special education coding and tiering created another time-consuming task. The special education team needed to update IEPs to reflect new requirements. Marisela Lopez, Comal’s Section 504 Coordinator, said, “One IEP was taking 45 minutes to update.” With so many IEPs to work through, that time added up quickly for staff.

Solution

Comal began using Panorama Student Success to bring student data and MTSS work into one place. Data from existing district systems flowed into Panorama, and Comal set up intervention and progress monitoring workflows around the district’s needs. The district also worked with Panorama to tailor its Accelerated Instruction Plan workflow and HB 1416 tracking. On the AIP work specifically, Chapman said, “We already had that mechanism in place, but we just needed to tailor it to our district, which we did.” The rollout included training and refinement, beginning with elementary schools before expanding to secondary campuses.

Comal also began using Panorama Solara to explore how AI could support work already happening around student services. District leaders used Solara to build reports and explore differentiation, while the special education team applied it to IEP updates required by the state’s new coding and tiering structure. Comal is prioritizing Student Success and its core MTSS workflows before expanding Solara access to teachers districtwide.

Results

As Student Success has rolled out, Comal educators have gained a more consistent starting point for student information. Staff can view campus trends and use discipline and risk indicators to identify students who may need additional support and begin planning for them.

That shift is also helping with 504 work. Lopez explained, “Previous to this, when our 504 campus coordinators would create or update a plan, they’d have to go to several different locations to get screenshots of grades and attendance and things like that. Now we can just go into Panorama, export a PDF of the student profile page, and then upload it into our system. And it's more readable for the parents as well as the staff members.” Lopez described this new process as “a one-stop shop.”

As more teams turn to Student Success for student support work, districtwide adoption has continued to grow. Monthly active users rose 272%, from 71 to 264 in 90 days, while documented interventions grew 115% year over year. Of the adoption of Panorama, Chapman noted, “We’re starting to see a tighter alignment around the district.”

For Texas House Bill 1416, Comal now uses a customized Accelerated Instruction Plan workflow in Student Success, including tools to track required instructional minutes. The AIP process sits alongside the district’s broader intervention and progress-monitoring work as responsibility shifts to the MTSS team.

Solara also cut the time the special education team spent updating IEPs. Lopez said an update that had traditionally taken 45 minutes could now be completed in about 3 minutes using the AI tool. “It saved them a ton of time,” she said. In addition, Comal started the school year with about 95% of its IEPs updated to the new state requirements, which Lopez said was sooner than the state expected.

Next Steps

Comal’s next step is to keep expanding Student Success across the district, with a goal of introducing it at every campus by March or April while continuing to refine workflows already underway. The district also plans to roll Solara out to teachers piece by piece and is exploring future uses including goal-building, differentiation, stronger PLCs, and common formative assessments.

Chapman summed up the sequence: “Honestly, the Student Success piece, that's our first goal. And then Solara, hopefully we can intertwine that all throughout.”