School Crossing. Photo submitted by Sarnia Police Service. School Crossing. Photo submitted by Sarnia Police Service.
Sarnia

No Input From School Boards On Crossing Guards

The St. Clair Catholic and Lambton-Kent District School Boards confirm they were not contacted by the City of Sarnia to discuss proposed crossing guard cuts.

Catholic Board Director Dan Parr said city staff didn't contact him or any of his staff, at the school board office, with regard to the issue prior to it going to council.

"I must say, in fairness, that I have learned the city did contact CLASS [Chatham-Kent Lambton Administrative School Services]," Parr said Tuesday. "CLASS is the business consortium which operates at arm's-length from both school boards and it operates to manage and provide school bus transportation to both school boards. The City of Sarnia contacted CLASS, they requested some information [from area principals] that would help them make their decision and conduct their review on school crossing guards. CLASS provided the information back to the city as requested and the city used that information to make the decision that they did."

Parr said if he or his staff had been provided the information they could have been helpful in communicating the recommendations, but ultimately none of the cuts made concern him.

"We have two schools that might have been affected by some of the changes being considered by Sarnia. Those were Gregory Hogan and Holy Trinity," he said. "The principals were given the opportunity to offer their input on those decisions and both principals were completely fine with the decisions the city made. To be specific, the city was asking if lunchtime crossing guards were still necessary at our Gregory Hogan and Holy Trinity schools and the principals confirmed, in their view as principals, those lunchtime crossing guards were not necessary."

Lambton Kent District School Board Public Relations Officer Heather Hughes said the city took the same approach with the public board.

"We certainly understand the City of Sarnia has to make some really tough financial decisions and that's obviously evident by Monday's vote," said Hughes.

"We've been through this before with the Municipality of Chatham-Kent, which ended its crossing guard program at the end of November and we worked through that process with the Municipality of Chatham-Kent to make sure that there was as smooth of a transition as possible and that everybody was appropriately notified of those service changes. In the end, this is a service provided by the City of Sarnia and we will support their decisions on the service changes by communicating those changes to our students and families and we continue to look for further information and support from the city as to how we can make sure that the families that are affected by their service changes are notified appropriately."

Chatham-Kent Council voted in 2016 to phase out its municipal crossing guard program, opting to install automated crosswalks at several of the crossings instead.

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