Two Thumb-area police departments now have officers better equipped to work directly with students, teachers, and school administrators after completing a specialized training program designed to bring law enforcement and education closer together.
Officers from both the Ubly Police Department and the Deckerville City Police Department were among 21 Michigan law enforcement officers who recently completed the Teaching, Educating, and Mentoring School Liaison Program — known as TEAM. The five-day training was hosted by the Michigan State Police Grants and Community Services Division and concluded on Friday, March 6th.
For the communities these officers serve, the completion of this training is a meaningful investment in how local law enforcement engages with young people — and it comes at a time when the relationship between schools and police departments across Michigan has never been more important to get right.
What the TEAM Program Actually Is
The TEAM School Liaison Program is not a standard police training course. It is a school-based, law-related curriculum specifically designed to be taught by police officers to students in kindergarten through twelfth grade. That range — K through 12 — is intentional and significant. The program recognizes that the relationship between young people and law enforcement needs to be built early and sustained through every stage of a student’s development, not introduced for the first time when a teenager is already forming fixed impressions about authority and community safety.
The curriculum is built around a straightforward but genuinely important goal: uniting educators, students, and law enforcement officers to help children protect themselves from crime. That framing is worth paying attention to because it positions the police officer not as an authority figure there to enforce rules, but as a resource and partner in helping young people understand the world around them and navigate it safely.
TEAM-trained officers bring law-related content into the classroom in a way that a textbook or a guest speaker simply cannot replicate. When a police officer teaches directly — answering questions, sharing real experiences, and engaging with students over days and weeks rather than in a single visit — it builds familiarity and trust that has long-term effects on how those students relate to law enforcement throughout their lives. Officers who have completed the TEAM training are equipped to do exactly that, consistently and effectively, across every grade level they serve.
Why This Matters for Ubly and Deckerville
For Ubly and Deckerville, having TEAM-certified officers is a concrete upgrade in what their schools can offer students. Both communities are small enough that the relationships between local police and the school population are already closer than they would be in a larger city — officers and students often know each other by name, and a familiar face in uniform walking the school hallways carries a different weight than a stranger in a badge. TEAM training builds on that existing familiarity and gives officers the tools to turn it into something structured and educationally valuable.
The Ubly community has been investing in its young people in visible ways recently. Earlier this week, the Ubly FFA Alumni and Boosters awarded $5,000 in Supervised Agricultural Experience grants to five student members — a program designed to give students real-world agricultural experience and the financial foundation to pursue meaningful projects. The TEAM training completion by the Ubly Police Department fits naturally alongside that kind of investment. A community that funds agricultural grants for students and sends its officers through school liaison training is a community that takes the development of its young people seriously across multiple fronts.
Deckerville has also been navigating a challenging period institutionally. The Deckerville Community Schools district has been drawing on fund equity to balance its current budget — a sign of the financial pressures facing small rural districts across Michigan. In that context, having a TEAM-certified officer available to deliver law-related curriculum at no additional cost to the district is a meaningful resource. It enhances what the school can offer students without requiring budget dollars the district does not currently have to spare.
21 Officers Trained Across Michigan
The broader picture of this training class is also worth noting. Twenty-one law enforcement officers from departments across Michigan completed the five-day TEAM program together, and all of them are now returning to their home communities equipped to build more effective school liaison relationships. That is 21 schools or school districts that will have access to a more capable, structured, and curriculum-driven law enforcement presence in their buildings.
The Michigan State Police Grants and Community Services Division, which hosted the training, plays a central role in extending this kind of capacity-building to departments that might not otherwise have access to it. Smaller departments in rural communities often lack the training budgets and staff resources of larger urban agencies. Programs like TEAM, hosted at the state level and made available to departments across Michigan, help level that playing field and ensure that students in small Thumb-area communities have access to the same quality of school-based law enforcement programming as students in larger cities.
For the 21 officers who completed the training, the five days they spent in the program represent a genuine commitment of time and effort. Walking back into a school building with a new curriculum framework, new teaching tools, and a more deliberate approach to student engagement is a different experience than simply being present in a school as a security resource. TEAM training bridges that gap in a practical and measurable way.
Building Trust One Classroom at a Time
The relationship between young people and law enforcement is shaped by dozens of small interactions over years — not by a single event or a single conversation. A student who has had a TEAM-trained officer as a consistent presence in their school, who has learned about their legal rights and responsibilities in a structured and respectful environment, and who has had the opportunity to ask questions and get honest answers is a student who approaches their relationship with law enforcement from a fundamentally different starting point than one who has had no meaningful contact at all.
That difference matters for public safety, for community trust, and for the long-term health of the relationship between local police departments and the communities they serve. Programs like TEAM are not a cure-all, and no amount of training eliminates the complex factors that shape how young people experience law enforcement in their lives. But they are a genuine and evidence-supported step in the right direction — and the officers from Ubly and Deckerville who completed this training are now better positioned to take that step every time they walk into a classroom.
For school administrators, parents, and community members who want to learn more about the TEAM School Liaison Program and how it operates in Michigan schools, the Michigan State Police Grants and Community Services Division provides program information and contact resources for departments interested in the training. And for those wanting to understand the broader research behind school resource officer programs and their impact on student outcomes, the National Association of School Resource Officers maintains research, best practices, and program standards that reflect the current state of the field nationally.
