On March 11, 2010 the H-A -- a.k.a. the Park Ridge Herald-Advocate -- published an article headlined, "Crossing guards could be crossed off budget," written by the PRU Crew's favoritest local reporterette.
The opening line of the article says, "As many as a dozen school crossing guard positions could be eliminated in Park Ridge under a proposal to cut costs by more than $100,000."
The horror! The horror!
The article goes on to report, "Park Ridge Police Chief Frank Kaminski said the department's crossing guard budget is $62,100 for the 2010-11 fiscal year, considerably less than the $190,000 the city spent the current year. Kaminski said 12 intersections now staffed by crossing guards before and after school may have to be eliminated unless an alternative plan can be agreed upon. "I don't want to say all 12 intersections will definitely be cut," Kaminski told the Park Ridge City Council during a Sunday budget workshop, calling the list of impacted intersections "preliminary" until the department can discuss the matter with the crossing guards themselves."
The horror! The horror!
The article further reports, "Each crossing guard now is paid the equivalent of three hours of work per day, though they work closer to an hour per day, Kaminski said. Paying the crossing guards for just the hour they work could save the positions, but Kaminski questions whether this proposal would generate enough interest from community members. "The issue is getting a core group of people to work as guards on one hour pay per day," Kaminski said. He added that the department has not yet met with the crossing guards to discuss the situation."
The horror! The horr...er...wait...what???
Did we read that right? The issue isn't that "Crossing guards could be crossed off [the] budget," but rather, whether or not the crossing guards will agree to be paid for...wait for it...wait...only the time they actually work??? So instead of padding the crossing guards' pay with two extra hours beyond what they may actually work, as an inducement to get them to do the job of seeing school children across roads safely, the crossing guards would have to agree to doing the job and getting paid only for the time they actually do the job???
The horror! The horror!
We just love the H-A's reporting!
March 23, 2010
H-Apocalypse Now!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
16 comments:
Maybe we can get some illegal immigrants to be crossing guards, because they are said to be willing to do the jobs American workers won't do.
I had no idea. LOL! This is typical of government. Over pay for everything.
Mayor DipSchmidt probably should have thought about using his email list and/or a press release to correct the erroneous impression this report might have left with concerned partents...especially if they didn't read the whole thing very carefully...because this goes directly to the current state of the city's budget...
...but then, issuing a correction or clarification might have p.o'd the H-A reporter...what to do, what to do...
...and perhaps it was "felt" concerns over "mayoral powers" was somewhat more pressing...?
3:18:
You are very funny. not.
I think our crossing guards are wonderful and care very much for the safety of our children.
I seriously doubt any of them took the job for the money.
So lets see
work from
8:40-9:15
2:45-3:15
wreck your morning,afternoon,stand in 5 below zero temps,rain,snow...All for $11.00. I hear 16+ guards said they will not be back.The police department has/had a hard time finding people to work for 3hr min,I don't see them finding enough people for the 1hr pay..
Anon@5:28 --
Are you suggesting the adults in the community don't care as much about the safety of the school kids as has been professed?
That seeing to the safe crossing of children can only be accomplished if a certain dollar threshold, inducement is met?
Why can't the kids parents walk them to school if they're so worried about how their kids get across a street? If push comes to shove and the crossing guards will not sign up for only 1 hr. pay then it is up to the parents to make sure their kids get to school safely.
So many of the people in this town volunteer their time to worthy causes and never get one dime in return, but we have to pay people three times more than the time they put in to be crossing guards for our children. What is wrong with this picture? Their morning and afternoon is "wrecked" unless they get paid more than they work for, so 16+ guards are going to just quit the job.
I think it's unfair to villanize the crossing guards. The city agreed to pay them a certain amount for the job and now the city wants to take it away.
As somebody said the crossing guards stand out there watching over our students no matter what the weather is. I think they do a great job.
Both sides of this particular debate are understandable. Changing the rules of engagement in midstream seems very unfair to the crossing guards.
We also understand taxpayers who may resent having to pay inflated amounts in order to induce people to take on the position of crossing guard to ensure the safety of our communities' children.
We are wondering if each individual school would be willing to identify their own intersections at which they feel they cannot do without a crossing guard, and then approach their respective PTA organizations to help defray the costs to the community at large.
We haven't run a breakdown of the numbers and so we have no idea what the shortfall would be for each school, but it seems worth consideration.
Short of that, we are wondering if each school could muster their own volunteers, as has been accomplished in the past.
Idea!
Have the crossing guards become a PTO function. Set up a PTO Chair for Crossing guards and parents can volunteer on rotations crossing the kids across the street.
its tooo bad that the cameras in the city council meetings dont catch reporter JJ with her headphones on during many parts of the meeting. She doesnt pay attention! then half reports the news...
Crossing guard volunteers - parents backing up the 5th graders who do the crossing guard jobs at the schools -- were discontinued at the Police Dept.'s insistence several years ago because parents trying to protect the kids were getting assaulted and battered by their fellow parents who were outraged that their self-indulgent, reckless behavior around the schools was not ignored. I am NOT making this up; there was at least one lawsuit. Chief Caudill decided we can't have civilians trying to enforce the laws on other civilians since they were comging to blows, so the unpaid volunteer adults were disappeared and the 5th graders were left alone to fend off the cellphone/latte/toddler/makeup/big-mac afflicted drivers, aka other kids' parents. Former Ald. Mary Wynn Ryan prevailed on current Ald. Frank Wsol, then head of the Public Safety Committee; Senator Dan Kotowsky and IDOT to come to the Dist. 64's eleventy-fifth meeting on the futility of safety measures. (Sally Prior thought "helmet checks" were a major initiative.) Wsol and Caudill agreed to have sworn officers patrolling (they are the only ones who can write moving violation tix, and moving violations are the killers, ya know); community service personnel to write parking tickets, and crossing guards - paid a nominal sum -- to actually escort the kids across major streets. Parents still drive like fiends but at least they may get a fine, which around here seems the only motivator for "civil behavior" in those above age 12. If any of these elements are removed, even more parents will simply drive their kids 2 or 4 blocks to school, and the more drivers, the more risk to what few kids are on foot out there(and risk even to those chauffered kids who have to leave the vehicle to enter the crosswalk at school), which will mean fewer kids walking, more risk for those who do, ad infinitum. It may be Neat to use Your Feet one week in April, but it's suicidally stupid the rest of the year. WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?
Anon@10:23 --
The parents you refer to who used to volunteer, we assume, free of charge -- would those parents be willing to again do the job of being crossing guards? But this time, for a more nominal fee -- 1 hr. pay vs. the current 3 hr. pay the current crossing guards receive?
Do the current crossing guards have more authority than those previous parent volunteers?
To the "parent" who stated "if you're worried about your kids safety, then you should walk them to school". I do, and even with the crossing guards I nearly get hit once or twice a week by some parent who is running late, talking on their cell phone (which I think is illegal in a school zone) or believe it or not, knowingly trying to push their way through the intersection because they think they're more important than the rest of us. Believe me, I've been flipped off more than once by some self important a-hole because we weren't moving fast enough for them. And despite your thought, it's sometimes not possible for all parents to walk their kids to school every day.
The kids would barely stand a chance of survival without the guards. First of all, they're kids. No matter how much we preach safety to them, they don't always pay attention. Secondly, they are 3 feet tall. There are a lot of drivers who don't see the 5-6 foot crossing guard holding the red stop sign. And lastly, people barely stop at stop signs in this town as it is. Do you think having a Fifth grader standing there holding out their hand is going to help.
This isn't one of those situations where we can try doing without and see how it goes because we all know the unfortunate consequence when the experiment fails. Who wants to play roulette with their kid to become the poster child for reinstating all the crossing guards when it fails. And it will.
As for the pay. Get real people. $33 dollars per day per intersection! It doesn't matter if the guards are working 1 hour or 1 minute. If you only want to pay for time actually worked, then raise the rate to $25-30/hr. Even though many of the crossing guards are out there for the sole purpose of protecting the kids, some are also out there to put a little spending money in their pockets (and who couldn't use that). As the police chief said, they have a hard time finding guards as it is, why make it even less desirable? Without the guards or even with fewer guards, there would need to be a heavier police presence. Do the math and figure out what it would cost per hour for that and I think you will find that $33 a day is a bargain. Especially if it saves a child's life.
10:17:
Great post!!! It is so funny to me how people look at this. They see crossing guards as some kind of extravagant luxury.
Post a Comment