Erie Schools Crossing Guards
St Vrain sent out a notification today (just a few days before school starts) that there would not be any school employees supporting crossing guard duties this year. Their claim is that Erie cut funding for crossing guards 8 years ago, and that school staff is not "qualified nor have the authority" to help kids cross streets safely.
This concerns me because in some cases, schools were built on the opposite side of busy streets vs where the homes and neighborhoods where students live. I feel like the community has an obligation to ensure students have a safe way to get to school, because there aren't enough buses and it seems unnecessary to assume that all parents just need to drop their kids off because the hug and go lanes don't have enough capacity for that solution either.
Is there a Town of Erie mechanism to escalate this issue if the schools are wringing their hands of this? I can't imagine this key safety mitigation can be the most costly or logistically challenging thing to address, but could have significant impact on a broad population of students trying to get to and from school twice a day. I would hate for this issue to only gain attention after even a single student gets hurt crossing CR-5 when it could be so preventable.