LAS VEGAS (FOX5) — With less than a week until the start of a new school year, Las Vegas leaders push forward with a proposal to increase safety at schools in the valley.
Las Vegas City Council unanimously approved the expansion of the city’s School Crossing Guard Program.
“The city really continues to implement our Vision Zero Action Plan, which is aimed on eliminating deaths and serious injuries caused by traffic accidents and a real big pillar of that is our School Crossing Guard program,” Las Vegas director of public works Joey Paskey said.
For those unfamiliar, this program has stationed hundreds of crossing guards across 72 elementary schools in Las Vegas.
This expansion would bring new crossing guards to the 16 middle schools in the city as well as three high schools.
Cimarron Memorial High School, Palo Verde High School and Arbor View High School.
The latter two schools were among the top three Las Vegas schools with the most traffic incidents, according to Clark County School District data.
This expansion stemmed from a pilot program conducted last school year, placing two crossing guards at Cimarron High School and one guard Gibson Middle School.
Paskey said the results of that test showed zero crashes during school drop off and pick up times from November 2024 through the end of the school year.
“We talked to the students, we talked to the parents, we talked to the school administration and really got a feel for how they felt the programs were working at both of those and got really positive feedback through these community surveys,” Paskey said.
As far as how many crossing guards are put at each school, the number varies.
City leaders look at a series of factors to decide the size of crossing guard presence, including the number of crossings at a school, how far a distance students need to cross and the traffic volume with the school zone.
Upon approval, Paskey felt confident this expansion will lead to positive change in keeping kids safe.
“We believe the data supports a safety need for the expansion of the program if that’s possible. The pilot results were definitely promising,” Paskey said.
It’s unlikely crossing guards will be fully set at the new schools by Monday’s start of school.
Paskey said it will be a rolling start as city leaders work to hire new crossing guards.
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