City Plan to Stop Paying Crossing Guards Angers School Officials : Budget: Ventura, citing a recent state legislative decision, is threatening to pass on the $77,000 cost to the district. Educators argue moral responsibility is at stake.

Raising the ire of some school officials, the city of Ventura is threatening to stop paying the wages of the 20 crossing guards who help children navigate busy streets on their way to school.

Taking advantage of state lawmakers’ decision last year that cities and counties are no longer required to pay for crossing guards in their areas, Ventura city officials have proposed that the local school district take over the $77,000 program cost.

But the president of the Ventura Unified School District board said the city and the Police Department, which runs the crossing guard program for Ventura, still have a moral responsibility to provide crossing guards even if they are no longer legally required to do so.

“We are an educational institution,” board President Diane Harriman said at this week’s meeting. “The Police Department and the city of Ventura are just as responsible for the safety of the kids on the street as we are.”

Ventura is not the first agency in the county to try to get out of paying for crossing guards.

The Ventura County Board of Supervisors last summer stopped funding the program in all unincorporated areas of the county, leaving individual school districts to scramble to provide the service themselves in those locations.

At about the same time, the city of Santa Paula asked the Santa Paula Elementary School District to take over the $60,000 cost of paying for crossing guards in that city.

But the school district refused, and now Santa Paula has no crossing guards, City Manager Arnold Dowdy said. “There’s a lot of parents walking their kids to school,” he said.

In Oxnard, city officials proposed last fall that the Oxnard Elementary School District begin paying the $336,000 cost of their city’s crossing guard program. The city backed down after angry parents packed City Council meetings to protest, but school officials have said they expect the matter to come up again.

To avoid a public uproar in Ventura, school officials have been meeting quietly with the chief of the Ventura Police Department, which runs the city’s crossing guard program.

“What we don’t want to do is get into a spitting match with the city,” Supt. Joseph Spirito told the school board Tuesday night. He said the district is trying to negotiate a resolution with the city.

Assistant Supt. Joseph Richards said he is very concerned about the potential liabilities that the district may face if it were responsible for the crossing guard program.

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And Harriman said she is strongly opposed to the district taking on such liabilities. “I think that public safety is a Police Department responsibility,” she said. “I think that traffic control is a city responsibility. And our responsibility is to protect children once they get to school and to educate them.”

But Ventura police and city officials said it is only fair that the school district begin paying for crossing guards.

Although the state Legislature left the public education budget virtually untouched last year, it drastically cut funding to cities and counties, Ventura City Councilman Gregory L. Carson said Wednesday. To help make up for these cuts, the state gave cities and counties permission to stop funding certain programs, including crossing guards.

“We’re having to cut services right and left because of our budget situation,” Carson said. “They were kept whole. As far as I’m concerned, they should take an added responsibility for staying whole.”

The city of Ventura has cut $7.5 million from its budget over the past 2 1/2 years, he said.

Ventura Police Lt. Steve Bowman said the city has proposed to gradually transfer responsibility for the program to the district. The Police Department would, for example, continue training the crossing guards after the district began paying their salaries and coordinating the program.

“We’re not going to dump it on them,” Bowman said.

Bowman agreed with school officials that the city shares some responsibility for providing crossing guards, particularly because the safety workers help many residents other than children cross at busy intersections during school hours.

The city employs about 20 part-time crossing guards who take turns filling 16 posts around the city during the morning, lunch period and immediately after school. They are each paid roughly $5 per hour.

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But Bowman said the district may be better able to monitor the program because school officials know best when and where crossing guards are needed.

“The crossing guards cross more than students, and it obviously affects the whole community,” he said. “But in these days of budget cuts, we need to find the most economical way to keep people safe. The old way may not be the best way.”