Michigan Schools Have an October 1 BTAM Teams Deadline. What Happens October 2?

Six Weeks to Build a Team. Much Longer to Build a Good One.

An approaching deadline in Michigan caught my attention. By October 1, 2026, every public and nonpublic K12 school in the state must have a Behavior Threat Assessment and Management, or BTAM, team. Michigan law requires those teams to include, at minimum, a school administrator, a mental health professional, and a school resource officer or other appropriate local law enforcement official.

As I write this, Michigan schools have about six weeks to develop their BTAM teams. I suspect that deadline looks very different depending on the school. Some already have established threat assessment processes and experienced teams, so this may mean making some adjustments, checking the requirements, and making sure everything lines up. Others may be starting considerably closer to the beginning.

Any time there is a new requirement like this, there is an understandable tendency to work backward from the compliance date. Who needs to be on the team? What policies do we need? When do we meet? What training is required? Who is responsible for getting all of this done by October 1? Those are reasonable questions, particularly when October 1 is staring at you from the calendar. I would spend some time thinking about October 2 as well. Once everyone is named, the procedures are written, and the requirement is met, the much longer process of becoming a good team is still waiting.

What Happens After You Put Everyone Around the Table?

Michigan gives these teams a pretty substantial job. They are expected to define concerning and prohibited behavior, educate the school community about warning signs, assess concerning behavior, distinguish credible from noncredible threats, establish a central reporting mechanism, clarify the relationship between the school and law enforcement, and determine when law enforcement intervention is appropriate. When a student engages in concerning behavior, the team is also expected to develop a written plan that includes supportive measures in addition to any punitive response. You can put the required people around a table fairly quickly. Getting them comfortable enough with one another to do all of that well takes time.

Anyone who has served on one of these teams knows that some of the hardest questions are also the most mundane. Where does the report go? Who checks that reporting system? Who starts gathering information? What happens if the report comes in at 4:45 on Friday afternoon? Who talks with the parents? What happens when law enforcement has information the school doesn't, or a teacher knows something nobody else on the team knows? Who remembers to check on the student two weeks later?

Those questions may not be as interesting as debating whether someone poses a threat, but they matter a lot to whether the team works. Eventually, a good team develops a rhythm. People learn what information their colleagues need, who is good at getting it, when to bring someone into the conversation, and when a case that seemed fairly straightforward needs another look. You don't get much of that from putting names on an organizational chart. It comes from training together, working cases, reviewing what happened, and getting more comfortable with the process over time.

Don't Build a Threat Assessment Team That Only Assesses Threats

One thing I particularly like about the Michigan law is its attention to concerning behavior. Teams are expected to define prohibited and concerning behavior and educate their communities about warning signs that someone may be at risk of harm to themselves or others. They are also responsible for creating a central reporting mechanism and helping students, parents, guardians, and school personnel understand what to report. That matters because I worry sometimes about the word “threat” in threat assessment. It can unintentionally teach people to wait for a threat.

Someone says something explicitly threatening, and everyone knows what to do. The harder situations are often the ones where a teacher, counselor, coach, classmate, or parent has a collection of observations and a nagging feeling that something has changed. Maybe there is an escalating grievance or fixation. Maybe there are increasingly concerning communications. Maybe the student is having conflicts in several different places, and nobody has put those pieces together yet. None of those things, by themselves, tell us that a student is going to become violent. That is precisely why we need a process rather than a checklist. Someone needs to bring the concern forward, and the team needs to review the available information and determine what, if anything, needs to happen next.

Some cases will turn out to present little or no threat. Some students will need help for reasons that have very little to do with violence. Others will require more active assessment and management. The important thing is that the school community does not learn that the BTAM team is only the place you call after somebody says they are going to hurt someone.

The “M” May Be the Hardest Part

Michigan calls these Behavior Threat Assessment and Management teams, and I think the last word deserves some attention. Assessment is usually easier to understand. A concern comes in, the team gathers information, talks with people, applies its process, and reaches some conclusions about the situation. Protocols, instruments, and training programs can help teams become more consistent in doing that work.

Management is where things can get messy. A student may need mental health support, increased supervision, conflict resolution, academic assistance, family involvement, safety planning, changes in access or environment, law enforcement involvement, or several of those things at once. Someone has to turn the assessment into an actual plan, and then somebody has to make sure the plan is happening.

The situation also refuses to freeze in place just because the team finished its meeting. The student who looked one way on Monday may look different on Thursday. New information comes in. A relationship changes. Something happens at home. The student does well for three weeks and then suddenly doesn't. Management means continuing to pay attention.

This is one reason multidisciplinary teams matter. The administrator, mental health professional, and law enforcement representative will see some situations differently. Add teachers, special education professionals, counselors, coaches, or others when appropriate, and you get even more perspectives. That can make the conversation more complicated, but complicated is not necessarily bad. The situation itself was probably complicated before it ever reached the team.

Michigan Is Worth Watching From Outside Michigan

Michigan is not the first state to require threat assessment teams in schools. Virginia began requiring public K-12 school divisions to establish threat assessment teams in 2013. Florida requires threat management teams at each school, and Ohio and North Carolina are among the other states that have put threat assessment requirements into law.

The laws are different enough that I wouldn't lump them together and declare that we have arrived at a single national model. I do think there is something happening here worth watching. Behavioral threat assessment has moved from a recommended school safety practice to something states are increasingly willing to define through legislation.

That should be interesting even if you are reading this from Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Indiana, or anywhere else without Michigan's October 1 deadline. If your state legislature announced tomorrow that your schools would be required to have functioning BTAM teams, how much would actually have to change? Maybe very little. Maybe you already have a multidisciplinary team, a reporting process people understand, a consistent approach to assessment, good documentation, management plans, and regular training. Or maybe someone would have to start making phone calls.

There's value in finding that out before a legislature makes you do it. Give your existing team a complicated case and see where the friction appears. Ask a teacher how they would report a concern. Ask someone on the team what happens after an assessment. Find out whether three members give you roughly the same answer. You may learn more from that than you would from reading another policy.

Our Higher Education Colleagues Might Want to Keep Reading

This is a K-12 requirement, and the immediate work belongs to our colleagues in Michigan schools. I wouldn't stop paying attention if I worked in higher education, though, because most of the questions Michigan is forcing K-12 schools to answer are questions BIT, CARE, and threat assessment teams should be able to answer too.

Where do reports go? What should people report? Does the campus community know the team exists? How does the team gather information? Is there a consistent assessment process, or does it depend heavily on who happens to be at the meeting that day? What happens after the assessment? Who keeps track of the case? How often does the team actually train together rather than simply showing up for meetings? The student's age changes some things, obviously. It does not change the need for a functioning process.

States already have precedent for becoming involved in higher education threat assessment. Virginia has required threat assessment teams at public colleges and universities since 2008, and other states have statutory requirements affecting higher education as well. That doesn't tell us where Michigan goes next or what another legislature might do, but it is enough to make this a trend worth watching.

If I chaired a higher education team, I might borrow the same hypothetical. If someone arrived tomorrow and asked me to demonstrate that we have a functioning behavioral threat assessment and management process, what would I show them? I would want the answer to involve considerably more than a list of committee members.

October 2

Michigan schools have a real October 1 deadline, and there is plenty to do between now and then. Schools need to understand the requirements, identify the right people, establish processes, use available training, and make sure the people who need to know about the team actually know about it.

Then October 2 arrives, followed eventually by the first case nobody is quite sure how to handle. Teams will have meetings that go well and others that expose gaps they didn't know they had. They will encounter students who fit neatly into the process and students who make everyone reconsider the process. Hopefully, they will get better at the work. That is the part I will be interested in watching. Michigan can require schools to create teams by October 1. What those schools build together after that date will tell us much more about what the requirement ultimately accomplished.

Resources

• Michigan State Police: School Safety Legislation: Official Michigan school safety legislation and implementation resources, including the BTAM requirement.

• Michigan State Police: Professional Development: Information about Michigan Behavioral Threat Assessment and Management (Mi-BTAM) training and related school safety professional development.

• Michigan State Police: Interim Threat Assessment Guidance: Michigan guidance addressing multidisciplinary threat assessment, intervention, management, and safety planning.

• Virginia Center for School and Campus Safety: Threat Assessment in Virginia: Background and resources on Virginia’s K-12 threat assessment requirements and implementation.

• Virginia Center for School and Campus Safety: Campus Threat Assessment: Higher education threat assessment resources and background on Virginia’s requirements for public colleges and universities.