School Safety Plans Are Missing One Critical Piece

When a credible threat emerges inside a school — a student in crisis, a targeted threat against staff, a potential act of mass violence — the first call goes to the threat assessment team. That’s by design, and it's working. But when the trauma has already happened, when the lockdown is over and the counselors have gone home, the financial fallout quietly begins. That second chapter rarely has a plan.

A 163-page report released by the U.S. Secret Service's National Threat Assessment Center (NTAC) in late 2025 offers the most comprehensive national look yet at how K–12 public schools are implementing Behavioral Threat Assessment and Management (BTAM) programs. Co-produced with RAND’s Homeland Security Operational Analysis Center and drawing on a survey of 1,746 school principals, the study marks a genuine milestone in school safety policy. Its findings also illuminate a significant — and largely unaddressed — gap in how schools, unions, and families prepare for the financial consequences of violence-related trauma.

Key figures from the report:

97%

of K–12 public schools now operate a BTAM team or equivalent.

97%

Adoption has grown from 42% in 2016 to 97% today. A near-total transformation in under a decade.

1,746

school principals were surveyed. The first nationally representative BTAM study of its kind.

The progress is real, and worth celebrating.

Let’s be clear: what the Secret Service report documents is genuine, hard-won progress. A decade ago, fewer than half of U.S. public schools had formal behavioral threat assessment teams. Today, 97% report using a team with BTAM responsibilities, and 82% operate a formally designated BTAM team. State mandates — many spurred by the 2018 Parkland tragedy — accelerated adoption significantly, but so did years of research, guidance, and outreach from NTAC itself.

The report also highlights something that often gets lost in debates about school security: BTAM is not a punitive surveillance system. Principals surveyed overwhelmingly report that their teams activate for genuine safety concerns — credible threats, potential acts of violence, students at risk of self-harm — rather than routine discipline. More than 75% of schools rarely or never use long-term suspension or expulsion as a BTAM outcome, and 80% rarely or never arrest or prosecute students referred to these teams. The emphasis is consistently on mental health counseling, trusted adult relationships, and skill-building. That's the model working as intended.

“The national conversation must shift from whether schools are using threat assessment to how well they are doing it.” Katherine Schweit Former FBI Active Shooter Program Director, on the 2025 NTAC Report

Where the gaps remain:

Despite this progress, the report identifies meaningful implementation deficiencies that deserve serious attention — and that carry direct financial risk for school employees, students' families, and institutions alike.

Training is uneven and often insufficient.

Half of schools lack formal written BTAM policies, and training frequency varies dramatically across districts. Teams that don't train consistently are more likely to misclassify threats, miss warning signs, or apply interventions inconsistently. The downstream consequences — a preventable incident, a post-event lawsuit, a staff member unable to return to work — are not hypothetical. They are documented outcomes of inadequate preparedness.

Parents and community capacity are the top barriers.

Principals consistently identified unwilling parents and limited mental health service capacity as their biggest operational challenges. This matters for financial planning: when a student in crisis doesn't receive timely intervention because community services are unavailable, the risk of an incident — and all its attendant costs — increases. The economic burden falls not just on the district, but on teachers, staff, and families who may carry the physical and psychological weight of that incident for years.

Serious threats are still occurring at scale.

BTAM teams are activated, by design, for the most serious cases. The report confirms that schools are managing threats of targeted violence, potential mass casualty events, and student self-harm on a routine basis. Many of these cases are resolved without incident — a testament to the model's effectiveness. But “resolved without incident” is not the same as “no trauma occurred.” Staff who work through a serious threat situation, parents who pick up a child from an emergency lockdown, and administrators who spend months managing a high-risk student case all absorb psychological stress that can manifest as lasting trauma, anxiety disorders, or inability to continue in their roles.

ATI Insight Our trauma coverage is specifically designed for the events BTAM teams are built to prevent — workplace violence, targeted threats, infectious disease crises, and other critical incidents. When prevention works, that’s the best outcome. When it doesn’t, or when the process itself creates lasting psychological harm, financial protection becomes essential.

The Financial Exposure Schools Aren’t Talking About

Consider the financial profile of a single serious school threat incident — even one that is successfully managed and results in no physical harm. The threat assessment process itself involves staff time, potential school closures, and coordination with law enforcement and mental health agencies. If a staff member develops a trauma response severe enough to require extended leave, standard disability coverage may not adequately address the origin of that leave. If a teacher is physically harmed during an incident, workers' compensation addresses medical costs — but often fails to account for lost future earnings, ongoing psychological treatment, or the career disruption that commonly follows.

Unions representing teachers, paraprofessionals, and school staff carry a particular responsibility here. The NTAC report makes clear that schools are managing genuinely dangerous situations every day. Union members are on the front lines of those situations. Supplemental trauma coverage — covering the gap between what standard policies pay and the full economic cost of trauma — is increasingly a matter of basic member protection, not a premium benefit.

For school districts and organizations, the calculus is similar. An institution that invests heavily in BTAM teams, training, and prevention programs — as the report recommends — has made a sound safety investment. That investment is most complete when paired with financial protections that acknowledge what happens when prevention reaches its limits.

What Sound Preparation Looks Like

The Secret Service report recommends that schools focus their next chapter of BTAM development on four priorities: refining practices and sustaining programs, addressing training gaps, developing clearer operational tools, and ensuring equitable, consistent intervention delivery. These are institutional recommendations, and they're the right ones.

Alongside that institutional work, individuals, families, and organizations connected to schools have their own preparation to do. Understanding what trauma coverage actually covers — and where standard policies leave gaps — is a starting point. Supplemental trauma and disability coverage designed for crisis-related events can provide the financial continuity that allows an affected teacher, counselor, or administrator to focus on recovery rather than financial survival.

American Trauma Insurance works with individuals, families, unions, and organizations to build coverage that reflects the actual risk profile of today's schools and workplaces. The NTAC report confirms what many school employees already know from experience: the work is meaningful, the stakes are real, and the need for both prevention and protection has never been greater.

Is your team covered when it matters most?

ATI provides trauma, life, and disability coverage tailored for school staff, unions, and organizations navigating the realities of modern institutional safety. Let’s talk about what protection looks like for you.

Contact Us Today

Source: Diliberti et al., The State of Behavioral Threat Assessment and Management in K–12 Public Schools, RAND / U.S. Secret Service National Threat Assessment Center, November 2025.