The future of the tenuous agreement between Buffalo Grove Village Hall and Community Consolidated Elementary District 21 to provide crossing guards at three elementary schools is unclear, officials said this week, and its deadline is nearing.
During its Oct. 15 meeting, the District 21 School Board voted against paying a $24,000 bill Village Hall sent it for the most recent and current school years. The board took that vote with three of its seven members missing, but opted to wait until more members were present to vote about how it will handle funding the guards in the future, and the bills that Village Hall is sure to send.
“It could come up at our November meeting,” district spokeswoman Kara Beach said on Monday.
The Buffalo Grove Village Board was due to discuss the item at its Monday meeting. Earlier Monday, Village President Beverly Sussman declined to comment on what might transpire at the meeting.
The Buffalo Grove Police Department hires, trains and pays the crossing guards who look after students on their way to and from eight elementary schools in the village, including District 21’s Kilmer, Tarkington and Longfellow. For years, Village Hall funded that service itself.
Since 2008, village officials have reduced their payroll when possible, and in 2013, they notified the leaders of District 21, Aptakisic-Tripp Elementary District 102 and Kildeer-Countryside Elementary District 96 that they were going to push 50 percent of the guards’ payroll onto the schools.
District 96 and District 102 complied. District 21 leaders have confirmed in recent months that they received their bills, did not pay them, and did not start negotiating with Village Hall on the matter until shortly before the start of the 2015-16 school year, after receiving word from the village that their three buildings would lose their crossing guards.
A meeting between the two sides took place on Aug. 20, four days before the start of the fall semester, at which the two agreed to split the cost of crossing guards for the next 30 days. That agreement has since been extended to Nov. 13, the day after District 21’s next School Board meeting. Beach said it remains in place.
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In correspondence and during meetings, Village Hall officials have cited the state’s School Code, which gives districts the ability “to employ persons for the purpose of directing traffic upon school grounds and on or along streets and highways or portions thereof within a radius of one mile from such school grounds, or to share the cost of employing such persons with or accept the employment of such persons by any unit of local government.”
District 21 has more at stake than just its three Buffalo Grove schools, though: Wheeling Village Hall provides them with eight crossing guards for the schools in that municipality, free of charge.
Wheeling officials were not reached Monday for comment.
Twitter: @RonnieAtPioneer