Park Ridge aldermen at their June 20 meeting unanimously extended a contract with a private crossing guard company to staff 23 street crossings near schools.
The contract with Andy Frain is worth $304,447. City staff told aldermen the program has been successful overall following the move to outsource crossing guard services for the 2022-2023 school year.
“Corners were staffed more reliably as Andy Frain has a bigger pool of resources to draw on,” Administrative Services Manager Leisa Niemotka said.
Niemotka added that city staff plan to meet with the schools and school districts who use the crossing guards to confirm the corners where crossing guards are set to work.
The police department will still administer the program, Niemotka said.
The cost of crossing guards for street corners and who ought to pay for them has recently been a sore point for city officials, local private schools and school districts.
The city first began moving to outsource guards in 2022 in response to increasing costs and difficulty hiring enough people to guard corners, and it approved a contract with Andy Frain in August of last year.
Over the winter, the city asked Park Ridge-Niles Community Consolidated School District 64 and Maine Township High School District 207 to help share the cost of crossing guard services. It also requested that three local private schools — Mary, Seat of Wisdom School, St. Paul of the Cross School and St. Andrews Lutheran School — chip in.
District 207 and District 64 both contributed to the program. Mary, Seat of Wisdom and St. Paul of the Cross School each offered to pay $4,000 as their contribution to the program. St. Andrews Lutheran School representatives said the school could not afford to help pay.