Both sides say they expect this to be the final extension of a months-long compromise — and it will keep crossing guards near three Buffalo Grove elementary schools through the end of the fall semester.
When Community Consolidated Elementary District 21’s students start walking back to school in January, though, they might be on their own.
One School Board member said the disagreement gave him bad nightmares.
“I’ve woken up twice this week at three in the morning, thinking about a kid being hit by a car,” District 21 School Board member Arlen Gould told his colleagues during their Nov. 12 meeting. “We’ve got to do the right thing. Take care of our kids.”
After the meeting, Gould said “the right thing” would be to pay bills from Buffalo Grove Village Hall that school officials have said for months are erroneous. His were the first public comments from a school board member in favor of acquiescing to Village Hall.
Earlier that day, Village Hall officials repeated their mantra: Pay what we are charging you or lose your crossing guards for the spring semester.
“There will be no more temporary agreements,” Buffalo Grove deputy village manager Jenny Maltas said in an email.
The two governmental agencies are squabbling about funding for the crossing guards who help students walk to and from Kilmer, Tarkington and Longfellow elementaries.
For at least two decades, those crossing guards were hired, trained and paid by the Buffalo Grove Police Department. In 2013, a belt-tightening Village Hall notified its three elementary districts that they would soon either pay for 50 percent of that service or lose it. Aptakisic-Tripp Elementary District 102 and Kildeer-Countryside Elementary District 96 received and paid their bills, but District 21 has not.
This summer, village manager Dane Bragg sent the district a final notice: pay both your outstanding bills and your half of the costs for the 2015-16 year, or your three Buffalo Grove schools will have no crossing guards in August.
Village Hall wants more than $24,000 for the 2013-14 and 2014-15 years, plus approximately $6,000 for spring 2016. The School Board voted unanimously on Nov. 12 to pay about $5,500 for half of this fall’s bill, but in October voted against paying the previous two years’ bills. Superintendent Kate Hyland noted in October that the district has an operating-budget surplus of $3 million, but specified that this money is going into its reserve fund, which the administration is trying to build back up to the state-recommended $25 million mark.
Twitter @RonnieAtPioneer