The Behavior Intervention Training and Teacher Support Act (B.I.T. & T.S.A.), enacted by the Nebraska Legislature in 2023, mandates behavioral awareness training for all Nebraska public school staff, including teachers, administrators, counselors, paraprofessionals, and nurses. Training must be reviewed at least every three years.
Starting in the 2024-25 school year, the Educational Service Unit Coordinating Council will ensure annual statewide training availability, with Nebraska’s ESUs responsible for developing and maintaining a statewide teacher support system.
In-Person with Trainer
Nebraska’s ESUs will provide Behavior Intervention Training & Teacher Support training upon request from their respective school districts. The training will last no more than one hour. The training may be held in conjunction with the annual suicide prevention training at the request of the school district and shall not exceed a total of two hours. Contact your local ESU to request an in-person BIT presenter.
Independent Experience
For individual, asynchronous training, visit the NDE Learning Network site, enroll (for free) in their Canvas Instance, and search for the ESUCC Behavior Intervention Training. Districts will coordinate with their identified personnel to do the individual training and follow the guidelines for reporting completion. Note: Your district does NOT need to be a Canvas user to access this course. Click here for details on Canvas registration
Who’s Required to Participate?
The law states that all school administrators, teachers, counselors, nurses and paraprofessionals must be trained within three years, starting on July 1, 2024. While the law only specifies these five roles for the sake of reporting, local school leadership can identify and include other staff members they feel will benefit from the training.
Report Your Staff Participation to the ESUCC
On or before May 1, 2025 (and on or before July 1 of each year thereafter), each school district shall submit a behavioral awareness training report to the ESUCC. To meet this requirement, the ESUCC has created software that includes all of the required reporting elements. It will be sent to each school district’s superintendent (or designee) to be completed. The district will need to keep a record of employees who have been trained.
If you have not received the link to the Behavior Intervention Reporting Tool, please contact Andrew Easton at aeaston@esucc.org.
Listen to the B.I.T. Episode of the Good Life EDU podcast
ESUCC Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Polk, shares the context for and details about a piece of 2023 Nebraska legislation that has led to an opportunity for the ESUCC to develop and deliver statewide training on topics related to mental health and teacher support. Terri Haynes of ESU 13 and Jackie Ternus of ESU 7 also speak from their role as content developers on this important teacher training.