Council Agrees to Fund Crossing Guard Service

City Council members placed five, $1 bills before them on the dais Monday night, hoping the simple gesture would help resolve a possible dispute with the local school board over funding of the city’s crossing guards.

Some school district trustees and local parents had blasted city officials over a proposal to split with the Simi Valley Unified School District the costs of paying for the city’s 20 crossing guards.

Although the city, which currently pays the crossing guard program’s full cost, originally offered to provide $182,000 of the program’s $188,800 budget, critics complained the proposal would take money away from financially strapped schools.

So Mayor Greg Stratton proposed that the agreement between the city and the school board be changed, with the city paying all but $5 of the program’s cost during the coming school year. To further demonstrate that money was not the city’s main concern, Stratton and the other four council members each placed before them a dollar they would contribute to the district to cover that cost.

Stratton said the whole point of the proposal was to place responsibility for the program on the shoulders of both the city and the school district, a move he considered necessary following recent changes in state law. Regulations no longer provide explicit authorization for cities to pay for crossing guard service, although they do not prevent such payments.

“My concern is that there is a potential that somebody, somewhere will come along and say it’s not legal” for the city to continue paying for the total program, Stratton said. “This, to me, seemed a very real way to guarantee the sanctity of the program.”

Council members voted unanimously Monday to approve the proposal, which will now go to the school board for consideration. Trustees must also approve the idea before it can become a reality.

Trustee Carla Kurachi had been one of the proposal’s more vocal critics, arguing before the council Monday that the responsibility for keeping children safe on local streets belonged with the city, not the school district. After the vote, she said she was happy with the results.

“What I am very, very pleased to hear is their commitment to our children,” she said.

However, Kurachi added that some elements of the proposal needed further discussion. One provision would absolve the city of legal responsibility for lawsuits or claims related to the performance of district personnel in connection with the crossing guard program. Another problematic clause, Kurachi said, would allow either the district or the council to back out of the agreement on 30 days’ notice.

Before the vote, several residents criticized the original proposal, saying the city should be responsible for the safety of its residents on city streets.

“This agreement would cause a tremendous liability problem for the district,” Simi resident Johnny Butler said. “In what way can the unified school board insure someone on someone else’s land?”

City Atty. John Torrance said that the school district could, if it wished, draft its own contract language to free the district from legal responsibility for the actions of city personnel in the program, in essence sharing the legal risk.