Parents and students in Prince George’s County Public Schools (PGCPS) are increasingly concerned by the lack of crossing guards at their schools and many know it’s an extreme safety hazard.
These concerns were made tragic reality on November 20, when two Riverdale Elementary School students, Sky Sosa and Shalom Mbah, were killed in a crosswalk on their way to school. There had previously been a long-term crossing guard at that crosswalk but they had retired over the summer and the county had been unable to fill the position since, said Prince George’s County Police Chief Malik Aziz. The painful incident has sparked calls for action from parents and community members.
“It has been a challenge for Prince George’s County Police Department to hire school crossing guards,” said Aziz. “It has been a challenge to bring people on board in this post-pandemic age of society that we are living in.”
The school’s Parent Teacher Student Association (PTSA) was not content with these responses and urged the police to take immediate action to ensure the safety of students throughout 2024.
Eleanor Roosevelt High School (ERHS) PTSA is one of several in the county dissatisfied with this response and is calling on police to take immediate action to ensure the safety of students throughout 2024. At the PTSA’s meeting on December 11, Vice President Jenni Pompi (who is also a Greenbelt City Councilmember) shared a letter co-signed by 11 parent-teacher organizations from schools in the county. The letter, whose signatories include Greenbelt Elementary School Parent Teacher Association Board and the ERHS PTSA, is addressed to Prince George’s County Police Department and calls on them to immediately fill any vacant crossing guard positions.
“We call on the Prince George’s Police Department (PGPD) to take immediate action and fill all vacant crossing guard positions by January 1, 2024, or sooner,” states the letter. “If more funding is required in order to offer the increased competitive pay and benefits needed to successfully fill these positions, we urge county officials to provide it.”
The letter asks that if the PGPD cannot fill the vacant positions, unspent funds be provided so municipalities and schools can “recruit, hire and pay their own crossing guards on an emergency basis.”
Finally, it calls for additional infrastructure like crosswalks and traffic-calming measures, increased funding for traffic enforcement around schools and deterrents like stop-sign cameras, to create safer routes to schools. “No more excuses. No turf wars or passing blame between various departments or levels of government. Every child has the right to get to and from school safely – and our kids can’t wait,” closes the letter from the PGCPS parent leaders.
Greenbelt’s City Council discussed the crossing guard vacancy crisis at their December 14 meeting (see article on p. 7 of the December 21 issue of the News Review). At that meeting, council decided to draft a letter to the county and to ask for clear information about the crossing guard staffing situation at Greenbelt schools.
A Dangerous Situation
On the last school day of 2023, two Prince George’s County Crossing Guards were posted outside ERHS, directing students, cars and buses at an intersection where four roads meet and the main road, Route 193, spans six lanes. They are there every day from 3:20 to 3:40 p.m., a crossing guard told the News Review. In the mornings, however, a similar volume of students and traffic have to navigate the roads without assistance.
ERHS students describe their pick-up area as disorganized, like a free-for-all. “When I’m walking across the street it’s kind of dangerous,” said ERHS student Noah Finney. On any given day, the parking lot and pick-up and drop-off area is congested with buses, cars and pedestrians, all moving about with little to no guidance. “The buses need to be directed and so do the kids,” Finney said.
There had been a crossing guard at the intersection of Greenbelt Road and Frankfort Drive morning and evening for years, until this school year. “That’s a six lane stretch of highway and right now there are no crossing guards there [in the mornings],” said Pompi. Parents of ERHS students have been pushing to get a crossing guard there since the beginning of the school year, Pompi told the News Review. There’s a residential neighborhood on the other side of Greenbelt Road, opposite the school and parents believe the intersection is too dangerous. It’s irresponsible to not have a crossing guard there, many feel.
“It’s important that we do something before someone gets injured, so that we don’t end up with a situation like what happened in Riverdale Park where, you know, those children were doing all the right things, they were crossing inside the crosswalk, they had an adult with them,” said Pompi.
Safe Routes to School Coalition
Concern for children’s safety on their way to and from the school has brought parents and community leaders together in shared advocacy. The Safe Routes to School Coalition for Prince George’s County is comprised of parents, teachers and community members, and has started a petition, based on the community letter, to bring further awareness to the issue, which can be found at OurKidsCantWait.com.
“The more we talked, the more we realized that we needed parents to come together to advocate not only for our own children at our own schools, but all of our children at all of our schools,” said Pompi, who is a member of the coalition.
According to the Safe Routes to School Facebook page, the movement has been receiving more support and traction with each day. The page has supporting groups including: Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks, the City of Mount Rainier, Climate Parents of Prince George’s County and a number of other parent-teacher organizations and community groups.
Other Greenbelt Schools
Some local schools do have crossing guards. Greenbelt Elementary School has two longtime guards helping children cross on Ridge Road. However, both Greenbelt Elementary and Springhill Lake Elementary could use more crossing guards for the intersections around the schools.
Located just a few minutes down Greenbelt Road from ERHS, Dora Kennedy is well-equipped with crossing guards before and after school every day, according to teacher Phil Held. This is despite the fact that the K-8 school has a very small walking population compared to ERHS. What they do have are plenty of buses, and they’re located adjacent to a bus lot. “We’re a special program and kids come from all over the North side of the county. There are not that many who live in the local neighborhoods,” said Held. According to the PGCPS website, Dora Kennedy has almost 30 buses that come in and out each day. Held stands out there almost every day, before and after his teaching duties, helping direct buses and cars coming and going at the entryway on Greenbelt Road that the school shares with the bus lot. It’s an entryway that doesn’t seem to fall under the jurisdiction of Greenbelt, the State Highway Association or the county. So, the teacher directs the traffic there himself, in no man’s land. Meanwhile the crossing a few yards away on Greenbelt Road has two guards, “For those few kids who do walk, there are two crossing guards out on Route 193 every morning and afternoon,” Held says.
Low Wages
A large factor that has contributed to the lack of crossing guards in Prince George’s County has been the low wages for the occupation which has turned away many potential job applicants. In Maryland, crossing guard hourly pay falls below the national average, starting at $15 per hour compared to the national wage of $17. According to ZipRecruiter, Maryland also ranks number 34 out of 50 states nationwide for Crossing Guard salaries annually. Which for Maryland crossing guards comes out to approximately $30,000 per year. Thus, low pay is a deterrent when trying to fill these crucial positions, in a climate where other companies are offering higher base pay for entry level jobs. Not one town or city in Prince George’s County is among the top 10 in the state regarding compensation for crossing guards. According to ZipRecruiter, in Maryland animal crossing guards are currently paid $21.79, more than any school crossing guards in the state, let alone Prince George’s County.
As companies work toward raising wages and making cost of living adjustments in efforts to retain employees and fill vacancies, it’s likely many individuals would rather apply for jobs that don’t involve weathering the outdoors and navigating sometimes dangerous traffic. For example, a barista at Starbucks can expect to earn $15 to $24 an hour and total compensation of roughly $27 per hour including benefits, according to a recent press release from the company. It also said it will begin to boost wages by at least 3 percent, effective January 1, with longer-serving employees eligible for bigger raises. Employees of five or more years could see a pay boost of 5 percent.
PTAs Call for Action
Concerned parents and PTSAs are now, more than ever, emphasizing the importance of crossing guards at schools, and insisting increased pay for them as a priority in the budget for 2024.
Crossing guards in the Greenbelt area have stated they are “unable to comment” on the matter at this time.
“Now is the time to act and the longer we wait, the more danger our children are in,” said Pompi.
Cavit Ireland and Jon Dennis are University of Maryland students at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism writing for the News Review.