Schoolchildren at a crossroads

David Kihara

Monday, Oct. 24, 2005 | 7:56 a.m.

-- Responsible for providing crossing guards, as needed, to 135 CCSD elementary schools.

-- Have at least one crossing guard at every one of those schools.

-- Had 372 crossing guards employed for 262 crosswalks as of Friday. (Some crossings require more than one guard.)

-- Trying to fill 34 vacancies.

-- $1.77 million budgeted for its crossing guards

Sources: Helen Lawhon, Metro's crossing guards supervisor, and Officer Jose Montoya, Metro spokesman.

Henderson Police

-- Responsible for providing crossing guards, as needed, to 23 CCSD elementary schools.

-- 105 crossing guards employed for 109 crossings.

-- No vacancies to fill

-- $780,000 for "part-time" police employees, most of which are crossing guards

Sources: Anna Anderson, Henderson Police crossing guards supervisor; Keith Paul, Henderson Police spokesman, and Richard Derrick, Henderson budget director.

North Las Vegas Police

-- Responsible for providing crossing guards, as needed, to 25 CCSD elementary schools.

-- Two of those elementary schools -- Quannah McCall and Jo Mackey -- do not have crossing guards because police say they are not necessary.

-- 49 crossing guards employed. Most schools have two crossing guards.

-- Seeking an extra $37,800 to add two crossing guards to Wolfe/Guy Elementary, one to Goynes Elementary, one to Wilhelm Elementary and one to Tartan Elementary. The request went before the North Las Vegas City on Wednesday, Oct. 19.

-- Trying to fill one vacancy

-- About $300,000 budgeted for 50 crossing guards

Sources: Officer Tim Bedwell, North Las Vegas Police spokesman, and North Las Vegas City Council agenda documentation.

Each weekday Elnoria Hawkins joins the line of parents and grandparents who stand in front of Quannah McCall Elementary School in North Las Vegas, waiting to take the hands of children.

The 61-year-old grandmother is concerned that her 5-year-old granddaughter could be run over by a car as she attempts to cross the busy streets around the school.

"I wouldn't feel safe letting her walk home on her own," Hawkins said. "There are no crossing guards here. It's not fair to the kids."

McCall is one of two Clark County School District elementary schools in North Las Vegas that don't have any crossing guards.

Other schools throughout the valley do not have enough crossing guards, say parents, teachers and even police.

On Oct. 10, about 35 members of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, and residents of eastern Las Vegas, rallied across from Howard Hollingsworth Elementary to call attention to their requests for a guard to help children cross Bruce Street, a four-lane roadway in front of the school.

"We were told the principal has to write a letter requesting a crossing guard to get the formal process going," Meredith Turner, a leader of the group, said.

When Turner first started digging into the issue, she found that getting information about crossing guards and action on pleas was more complicated than she had anticipated.

The Sun ran into some of the same problems.

Neither the police departments nor the School District administration was able to tell the Sun how many crossing guards are assigned to each elementary school, or how many crossing guards have been requested at each elementary school, for example.

School District administrators say all of that is handled by the police departments, but police directed the Sun back to the School District.

Metro Police's public information officers couldn't -- or wouldn't -- explain discrepancies in information that department employees provided to the Sun about the number of crossing guards it employs and how many positions were budgeted for.

And Henderson Police couldn't -- or wouldn't -- explain how many crossing guard positions they had budgeted for.

Making things more complicated is the fact that different policies are applied in different parts of the valley because crossing guards are hired by the police departments in whose jurisdictions the schools are located.

All of the police departments complain that the positions are hard to fill because the pay is only $17 to $27 a day and the work is split into morning and afternoon shifts -- and in some instances mid-afternoon shifts for kindergarten students -- that last anywhere from 30 minutes to three hours.

Helen Lawhon, the coordinator of crossing guards for Metro, said although each of the 135 elementary schools under Metro's jurisdiction has at least one crossing guard, some need two or three or even 10 crossing guards because of the number of students and the number of busy streets that need to be crossed to get to the schools.

"The schools are asking all the time" for more crossing guards, she said.

Because there are shortages of crossing guards every school year, staff members at a few schools have attempted to volunteer to help out.

Until this month, however, school employees throughout the valley could not work as crossing guards. Police and school district staff did not allow it, citing the lawsuit risk for the district, officials said.

But in early October, Metro and School District officials worked out an arrangement to allow district employees to work as crossing guards as long as they are certified by police and not working on School District contract time.

Pat Nelson, spokeswoman for the School District, said some school employees, such as support staff, could work hours that would allow them to work as crossing guards. Teachers and other staff such as principals may also work hours that allow them to work as crossing guards but it depends greatly on the contract hours of the school staff and the working hours of the school.

She said, however, that no teacher will be leaving a classroom to work as a crossing guard, and that may prevent most teachers from being able to work as crossing guards.

That agreement only applies to Metro's jursidiction, however. So while it may help many schools, it won't do anything for McCall, since it is in North Las Vegas, and it won't be of any help to schools in Henderson.

Henderson Police, like Metro, need more crossing guards, said Anna Anderson, Henderson's crossing guard coordinator. She said, however, that Henderson Police decided not to allow teachers or parents to serve as crossing guards because "it was just too much of a headache."

"It was taking away from us getting corners manned." Anderson said. "It just wasn't feasible for us."

She said the background checks on teachers and parents as well as the training and organizing would be too problematic.

Anderson couldn't explain how it would be any more problematic than it would be for other applicants for the job.

North Las Vegas Police also do not allow school employees to become certified as crossing guards, said Tim Bedwell, spokesman for the police department.

Bedwell said North Las Vegas Police are trying to re-institute a volunteer crossing guard program and expect that teachers would not be excluded from that.

North Las Vegas is adding several more crossing guards. On Wednesday, the North Las Vegas City Council approved the department's request for an additional $37,800 to add five school crossing guards at three other schools.

But none of those guards is going to McCall or Jo Mackey because those two elementary schools do not have the kinds of traffic situations at those schools that meet the criteria for having a crossing guard, Bedwell said.

McCall administrators tried to place two campus hall monitors on Donna Street as crossing guards earlier this year, but the school's principal backed off that plan after being warned by North Las Vegas Police that it was opening the school up to potential lawsuits, said Maria Chairez, principal of Quannah McCall Elementary.

"I was told I could not have (school staff) cross there and if I did use a teacher, I would have to accept full responsibility," Chairez said.

The Donna Street situation was complicated by the fact that parents and students were crossing at a place where there is no painted crosswalk. The school, which serves one of the poorest neighborhoods in the district, is trying to get a crosswalk painted there.

According to a letter sent to parents from the principal in March, Chairez "had been notified by the North Las Vegas Police that our staff cannot cross children in an unmarked cross-walk. Our staff members have been walking the children across the street because of safety concerns when children cross the street themselves."

Bedwell said McCall does not have a crossing guard at the school because the students do not cross the major street nearby, Carey Avenue, to get to the school. Traffic on Donna Street is not heavy enough to merit a crossing guard, Bedwell said.

So far no one has been run over in front of the school, but "we hold our breath every day," said Assistant Prinicipal Samantha Barker.

She said the school has been asking for a crossing guard at the area for more than a year and directs parents to call North Las Vegas Police when they complain of the need for a crossing guard there.

Meanwhile, a principal at another school came up with his own defiant solution.

Gary Prince, principal of Dean Allen Elementary School in Las Vegas, was also tired of not having enough crossing guards at his school. Dean Allen Elementary, which is in one of the wealthiest areas of the district, has two crossing guards for its 725 students, and Prince wanted more.

Prince said when he couldn't get them from Metro Police he decided to volunteer as a crossing guard himself, despite the warning about the potential liability to the district.

"I do it because I want those children to be safe," he said.

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