Britney Fortner was a Program Coordinator over the Austin Police Department’s Threat Liaison and School Safety Outreach programs during two tragic school shootings. The first was the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on February 14, 2018 (also known as the Parkland school shooting). The second was the Santa Fe High School shooting on May 18, 2018.

Fortner recalls, “When both of those events took place, we as an intelligence center started asking ourselves: what could we do to mitigate these risks and these threats?”

Fortner took this question with her as she changed positions, becoming a Behavioral Threat Assessment Grant Specialist at Texas State University, where she provided training on legislative mandates for behavioral threat assessment procedures to safety personnel and administrators at K-12 institutions and colleges in Texas. Later, she joined YES Prep Public Schools as a Manager of Safety and Security, eventually rising to Director of Safety and Security.

“I learned a lot in that role because I was doing a lot more related to physical security,” Fortner reflects. “I did a lot of work related to mitigating risk when it came to school safety and really got my feet under me.”

With this experience behind her, Fortner eventually applied for and received her current position as Director of Safety, Security and Threat Management.

“It truly is my dream job,” she declares.

School Safety

Proactive school safety doesn’t begin on campus — it starts in the community.

To secure campuses, Fortner emphasizes the importance of taking a look at the surrounding community. Mitigating threats to schools requires security professionals to be attuned to trends and unrest within the community in order to identify the early signs of an individual grievance that could turn into violence.

“We’re trying to catch individuals that have a grievance early, so that we can put interventions in place to help that person and take them off the pathway of violence,” Fortner explains. “But if that person is not in our community and we don’t know of their grievance or what they’re planning — and they’ve already decided they’re going to act — at that point, it is almost impossible to stop something from happening.”

In the event that a person outside of the community plans to harm the school, preparation is key.

“You must have the appropriate measures and layers in place to be able to respond as quickly as possible,” Fortner states.

Securing school campuses is essential; yet, it’s not the only part of the job. Students must also feel comfortable coming into class each day.

“Our families have an expectation that they're going to drop their student off and that their student is going to not only be safe, but feel safe and learn.” Fortner asserts, “While security is my top priority because that's my job, our top priority in the school district is always going to be educating students.”

In order to ensure that students feel safe and comfortable, Fortner says she strives to ensure that “school still feels like school.” A huge component of achieving that is engaging in community relationships.

Security Is Relational

While Fortner has established herself in the realm of school security, she didn’t always start there. Instead, she graduated college with a Bachelor of Science in Public Relations with a Business Concentration, then later graduated with a Master of Education, focusing on higher education and higher education administration. Before she joined the Austin Police Department, she held roles such as an Event Manger for The Allan House and an Administrative Assistant for the National Institute for Staff and Organizational Development (NISOD).

Fortner’s educational and professional background provides her an essential skill for building and maintaining community relations: communication.

“Communication is so important for safety and security. Communicating expectations, communicating policies and procedures, communicating when something has gone wrong or not as intended — all of it is essential,” Fortner remarks. “It's important to be able to communicate enough so that you're providing transparency to what is going on, but not divulging all of your safety processes, because that creates vulnerabilities.”

The question that Fortner asked herself after two school shootings in quick succession — how to mitigate school risks — was found through community connections. While proper technology, training, and preparedness are also essential, when it comes down to it, school security professionals will achieve very little without strong community relationships.

“The most important part of this job is the relational piece,” Fortner declares.