This may come as a blow to many of you, but the days of the traditional Apple BTS program are over. Back to School season at Apple begins long before the previous school year ends with internal planning and discussion. For the last decade, the final approved program has rolled out to consumers in the US anywhere from mid-May to late June, so no one should expect anything to emerge from Apple at this late date. If something does come out, it is likely to take on a significantly different form than previous iterations.
Parsing the message sent to Retail employees by Angela Ahrendts, note that she promises only to "share to little bit more insight," not to roll out a program. In short, Apple no longer needs to give anything away to move the needle at BTS time. Finally, the BTS program in previous years has NOT been authored by the Retail team; rather, it was a product of the Marketing group. Hammering on Angela for the lack of a program this year is entirely inappropriate.
Finally, BTS is not an ongoing entitlement program. A little birdie shared that the bitching and moaning directed at the company when the program moved from freebie iPads to App Store credit was interpreted as a sign that BTS had run out of steam.