Santa Clarita / Antelope Valley : County Decides Not to Provide Funds for 180 School Crossing Guards

Los Angeles County officials first said they were sorry that school crossing guards had been left out of their budget. It was, they said, a mere slip of an accounting pencil, a mistake that they would try to correct.

But on Thursday county officials said they would not provide any of the $1.8 million needed to pay for 180 crossing guards working intersections at 132 elementary schools.

The decision shifts the burden to 30 cash-strapped school districts in unincorporated areas, including Castaic Union and Palmdale, which complain the county is balancing its budget on their backs.

“It’s a terrible precedent that is being set here,” Castaic Union School District board member Lester Freeman said. “It opens the door now, and what will be next that will fall on the school districts when we are already short?”

At Castaic Elementary School, three crossing guards normally staff intersections to help youngsters avoid dangerous traffic.

“When the county starts risking children’s safety and lives, they should be condemned for their blundering,” Freeman said.

But officials at the county’s chief administrative office blamed the state, which this year shifted $2.6 billion in property taxes from county governments to its own coffers. In exchange for the shift, said county management analyst Dorothea Park, the state relieved counties of several obligations, including the 15-year-old requirement to fund crossing guards in unincorporated areas.

“It was part of the governor’s budget package,” Park said. “The state was taking the county’s property taxes, and the county and local governments were saying that we needed some sort of relief.”

It is unclear whether any other counties in the state have taken advantage of the relief from the crossing guard funding requirement.

Supervisor Michael Antonovich last week proposed that the county make up 20% of the $1.8 million by using salary savings from the public works department. But this week it was discovered that those savings had already been spent.

“We have a number of places we are going to look for more funding, but I don’t know if they will be any more productive than our first attempt,” said Ollie Blanning, deputy to Antonovich. “I don’t have a good answer at this point on what we can tell our schools.”

Castaic Union has already decided that it will pay for its crossing guards from reserve funds.

“We need those crossing guards and we are willing to pay for them,” said Castaic Union Supt. Scott Brown. “The bottom of the bucket is kids’ safety, and we’ll have the crossing guards there.”