Since a 2021 school shooting in Jefferson County left three injured, Prosecutor Mark Taylor has been searching for ways to ensure such violence never happens again. 

He found hope in a program developed by the U.S. Secret Service that helps local communities identify potential threats and prevent disaster.

After bringing the Behavioral Threat Assessment and Management (BTAM) program to Jefferson County School District, Taylor is now on a mission to see the program implemented statewide. 

“There’s a desperate need for this in Idaho, and it’s not happening,” he said.

So he’s spent years developing a carrot to incentivize school districts to adopt the program — a proposal that is now on track to surface in the 2025 legislative session. 

Here’s how his legislative proposal would work: Essentially, if district leaders diligently implement the BTAM program, doing everything in their power to prevent a school shooting, and one still occurs — they could not be held liable in court. 

Some school leaders have resisted implementing BTAM because they say the likelihood of a school shooting is so low that it’s not worth investing the time and energy into preventative measures, according to Taylor. He hopes liability protection would be the push they need to get on board, because a shooting could happen anywhere. 

“They’re gambling that it’s never going to happen with their school,” he said. “But it’s really not a safe gamble to be taking.”

The State Board of Education approved his legislative proposal in August, an important step in a longer process that could lead to it appearing before the Legislature in 2025. The school safety and security advisory board also showed support for the proposal at a regular meeting on Tuesday.

Talk of the potential legislative measure comes as safety concerns at schools continually arise in Idaho, and as school leaders grapple with how best to keep students safe. 

School leaders must often make critical safety decisions — BTAM can help, but not all schools use it 

Mike Munger, program manager for the state’s office of school safety and security, has seen firsthand how BTAM programs have “helped to lower the temperature on grievances that individuals might have.”

There’s a reason the FBI, the Secret Service, foreign intelligence services and state and local law enforcement recommend BTAM, Munger said in an Oct. 1 interview.

Taylor said the BTAM approach cuts through myths about school shooters — such as that they are quiet loners. 

“A school shooter could be anybody,” he said, including star athletes and straight-A students. 

A better method for identifying students who may become violent is by recognizing behavioral patterns, determined by the Secret Service, that are common among shooters. 

BTAM teams bring together stakeholders from various backgrounds — from schools, law enforcement agencies, social service providers and more — who can speak to what is going on in a student’s life, assess whether they pose a risk and decide what to do next if so.

“The whole idea is to have a bigger picture so that we can see warning flags,” Taylor said.

“Everybody recommends that there is a structured process for behavioral threat assessment because it does work,” said Munger, who has worked with Taylor on the legislative proposal. “It doesn’t work 100% of the time, and unfortunately those are the stories that we see in the news, but we would see a lot more of those stories were it not for effective behavioral threat assessment teams.”

The BTAM program provides a systematic way for local leaders to make the best choice in a difficult situation, and ensures that choice is tailored to the specific situation at hand.

Well-meaning school leaders who once used zero-tolerance approaches to threats have walked that back, finding that it led to overreactions, Munger said. 

“We have to be able to step into the world of nuance, and understanding the student in the situation,” Munger said. 

But even with BTAM teams in place, “nobody can predict someone else’s behavior perfectly,” Munger said. 

“What people often want to ask a (threat assessment team) is ‘Is this kid going to hurt somebody?’” Munger said. “And a lot of times the kid doesn’t know that. So asking schools to be able to predict that is really an unfair expectation.”

That’s where the legislative proposal comes in. If a school has followed all the best practices for BTAM and still makes the wrong call, then “they’ve done everything they can,” Munger said at the advisory board meeting on Tuesday. “We can’t ask them to be mind readers. We can’t ask them to take on responsibility for another person’s behavior.”

In at least one case nationally, a school district adopted BTAM policies and procedures, but failed to follow them — with tragic consequences.

In a 2021 Michigan school shooting, school leaders adopted but did not implement BTAM and faced consequences

In 2021, Ethan Crumbley shot and killed four students and wounded six students and a teacher at his school, Oxford High, in Michigan. 

That day, school officials met with Crumbley’s parents about his drawings, one of which included a handgun and the words: “The thoughts won’t stop. Help me.” A gun was in Crumbley’s backpack at the time, but school officials did not search his belongings.

Crumbley’s parents refused to take him home. He returned to class, and about three hours later began his shooting spree. 

In April, Crumbley’s parents were sentenced to at least 10 years in prison for involuntary manslaughter, marking the first time parents have been convicted in a U.S. mass school shooting, according to the Associated Press. 

But school leaders have faced consequences as well: there’s been superintendent churn and school board resignations — the latter due to Oxford schools adopting but not implementing a BTAM program.

Cases like these aren’t just happening nationally — Idaho has had its share of gun violence and safety threats.

Gun violence and safety threats persist in Idaho

The only school shooting in recent Idaho history happened at Rigby Middle School in May 2021, when a sixth-grade student shot and injured two classmates and a custodian. 

That September, a second student brought a gun to Rigby Middle. She did not fire the weapon and no one was injured. 

Since then, Rigby School District leaders have taken steps to prevent further incidents, including banning backpacks, then allowing clear backpacks, and creating a BTAM team.

Still, threats of gun violence persist. In October, an elementary student made a gun threat on a Rigby school bus, according to East Idaho News.

Gun incidences and safety threats happen elsewhere in Idaho, too. This fall, an unaccompanied and unloaded rifle was found on a high school campus in Pocatello, and there was a “surge of unsubstantiated social media threats affecting school districts across the Treasure Valley and the nation” that prompted a special meeting in the Boise School District, one of the state’s largest. 

These are just some recent examples — there have been many more over the years. 

Taylor contends Idaho school leaders need to do more to prevent shootings, beyond just “hardening” schools with metal detectors and cameras. 

He hopes his legislative idea will become law after this session. “My hope is that school districts will say, ‘We really do want to prevent a school shooting. We want to be responsible. We don’t want to be negligent … If something does happen, we can say we did our best.’”