The crossing guards employed by the City of Oakland have the important task of ensuring the safety of students as they come and go from their school sites. Before the pandemic, the city had 69 of these crossing guards, mostly assigned to OUSD elementary schools. But at the end of October, there were only 46 active guards working in 36 schools, a drop of almost 30%.

The Oakland Department of Transportation shared the updated figures as part of a larger report to city council at a special meeting of the public works committee on November 29.

Megan Weir, who heads the Safe Streets division at OakDOT, said the main reason for the drop is the pandemic’s impact on school staff. When schools closed in March 2020, all crossing guard positions were either made redundant or labeled “inactive”. However, Weir said, when interviewed in April 2021, many did not return due to various life changes or health concerns, including the risk of contracting the virus in such a public role.

“Frankly, there has been a lot of transition for everyone over the past couple of years. Especially for this program, ”she said.

For years, the Ranger Program was administered by the Oakland Police Department. But OakDOT took over the program in May, one of nearly 50 new recommendations included in the city’s program. Report of the Task Force on the Reinvention of Public Safety. The city of Oakland created the task force following the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 to explore methods of public safety that do not involve the police.

OakDOT manager Ryan Russo said it had been difficult to transition some active guards to a new management and payment schedule. Making sure every guard is vaccinated is another reason for the difficulties, he said.

“In order to continue serving in the City of Oakland, it has been a pretty Herculean lift for our existing workforce. [to go] through this process. And that’s the same lift we would do in recruiting, ”Russo said.

The ad hoc committee meeting followed a meeting in October called by board members Noel Gallo and Sheng Thao. Their investigation focused on the city’s inability to recruit up to 75 crossing guards, which the council approved earlier this year under its current budget.

“When school started this year, a number of our schools across town and a couple in my district did not have crossing guards — Bridge Academy and Manzanita Academy, both schools [with] many road safety challenges, ”Gallo said at the meeting.

Russo and OakDOT staff cited the considerable time it takes to recruit people, interview them, and perform appropriate background checks. Currently, he said, the process of hiring new crossing guards takes between three and five months. OakDOT is currently processing several new applicants and expects approximately seven former guards to return in time for the spring semester.

The ministry also announced the creation of a Web page for the school crossing guards program, where interested residents can apply. Prospective applicants can also email the department directly at [email protected] The site includes a map of all the schools that have crossing guards:

Ranger positions in Oakland are part-time and cover drop-off and pick-up hours at school. The salary is advertised as $ 42 per day, and jobs are usually filled by people living in school neighborhoods. The position requires standing during working hours and involves helping people move along crosswalks safely. These crossing guards are separate from the city’s school safety patrol program, which OakDOT also oversees with the Alameda County Public Health Department. Safety Patrol is a grant-funded volunteer leadership program where students help lead pedestrians and traffic on their campus before and after school, under the supervision of an adult, usually a teacher.

Principal Rachel Quinn of Glenview Elementary School said the security patrol was doing a good job, at least at her school site. It is usually the experience of the supervising teachers, she noted, that makes the difference.

“I think our security patrol is doing a really good job, actually. I’ve been to other schools where it’s just a mess, ”she said in an email. “It takes a lot of human power and someone assertive (like my security patrol teacher, Mr. Miller) to tell people what they can and can’t do. It’s not a role for everyone, ”she added.

Official city crossing guards are not supposed to deal with traffic and have no authority to determine traffic violations or enforce traffic laws.

Cox Academy Elementary Principal Omar Currie said the crossing guard program has been a valuable part of his school’s recent safety efforts, especially as 90% of his students live within a mile of campus and walk to school. Currently, the school has three of Oakland’s 46 wardens.

Even so, said Currie, the roads surrounding the school site can feel dangerous. He sometimes takes on the role of an extra caretaker, he said, to make sure children get to school safely. Currie said doing the job of a crossing guard can be an “emotional” experience and can even involve arguing with drivers.

“I had to stop in the middle of the street to prevent cars from going in the wrong direction,” he said in a telephone interview.

Speeding around the school is common, he said, and he believes there should be more support from the police. For example, earlier this year, while teachers were inside the school preparing for lessons, a car crashed into the playground at Cox Elementary School. The driver got out of the car and fled the scene. Fortunately, there were no children.

“The crossing guards cannot [affect] the quality of driving, ”he said.

In 2020, there were 12 accidents near the school, according to safe routes to school SWITRS database maintained by SafeTrek of Berkeley, including an accident four blocks outside Elmhurst Elementary which resulted in one fatality. Since no one was hit in the Cox playground crash, that won’t count for 2021 data.

In recent years, several crashes near Oakland elementary schools have resulted in death or serious injury. In 2019, a pedestrian was struck in front of East Oakland Pride Elementary on 82nd Avenue. In 2018, a woman died in a hit-and-run as she crossed the street with her 4-year-old daughter outside Garfield Elementary School. And there have been several collisions with pedestrians and cyclists outside Roots International Academy, on Havenscourt Boulevard in Fruitvale, since 2015. East Oakland Pride and Garfield each have a crossing guard, and Roots is in the same block as Lockwood Elementary, which has three.

OakDOT has said in the past that it uses SWITRS crash data to help it make decisions about road safety. In last week’s report, officials noted that the ministry is “developing a prioritization approach” for the school crossing guards program around safety and fairness, in the same way it chooses which streets to prioritize. for paving.

One positive element stemming from OakDOT’s takeover of the crossing guard program, Weir noted, is that there are now monthly meetings between school officials and Safe Streets engineers. So, if a parent has a specific concern about the safety of the school site, they can let school staff know and expect the comments to reach OakDOT officials.

Currie, who attended those meetings, said the majority of conversations so far have mostly been about going back to school after the pandemic, and not much about road safety.

More than 30 Oakland public elementary schools do not have crossing guards, and some residents say they feel left out of the process.

A resident of the Jefferson neighborhood of East Oakland wrote in the 311 help site four months ago to say that the Global family (formerly Jefferson Elementary) and Learn without limits the schools, both in East Oakland, are surrounded by dangers and in dire need of guards. The person said students enter schools from a variety of locations, including 39th Avenue and Carrington Street.

“Due to the challenge of multiple entry points, I think traffic delays and double parking are a concern for the safety of our children,” they wrote.

Other townspeople told The Oaklandside there weren’t enough guards to help. Anna Kim, who lives near an elementary school in Chinatown, said guards near her neighborhood school only appear to cover streets with no traffic lights. “These aren’t the main streets where I see most of the accidents happening, usually from the traffic lights,” she said.

Others say that when it comes to dangerous driving speeds, several schools need help but do not have official school crossing guards. Reid Williamson, an automotive designer who lives near Fruitvale, said that at Sequoia Elementary on Lincoln Avenue in the Lower Dimond neighborhood, he saw cars driving down the hill. But the only school crossing guard is a volunteer parent.

“I didn’t even know that crossing guards were tied to a program and schools have one,” he said.