Thomas MacMillan File Photo
Crossing Guard Linda Snow outside John C. Daniels School.
More schools may have cops keeping students safe, along with better-paid crossing guards shepherding them across the streets outside.
Those were two results of Monday evening’s meeting of the Board of Aldermen. City lawmakers voted unanimously to give crossing guards a raise. They also officially received a proposal to accept a $3 million federal grant to hire 15 new cops for three years to be stationed at public schools; that would triple the number of so-called “school resource officers,” a category that has grown in recent years.
The motion to increase crossing guard wages came out of the city’s labor relations office, by way of the Board of Aldermen’s Finance Committee. Hill Alderwoman Andrea Jackson-Brooks, chair of the committee, said the three-year deal calls for a 2 percent wage increase each year. The total cost to the city is $15,765, she said.
The proposal passed unanimously without discussion.
School crossing guard is a part-time position. It currently usually pays $5,366 a year. It pays no benefits. (One chief crossing guard does have a full-time position; it pays $40,682.)
For the 2013/2014 school year, experienced crossing guards will get $13.67 per hour and newly hired guards will get $11.35. Next year those figures will be up to $13.94 and $11.57; and the following year they will go up to $14.22 and $11.80.
“If somebody’s out there helping your child cross the street, they deserve a raise,” especially since “they’re making peanuts. They’re probably not making enough to iron the shirts,” Jackson-Brooks said. She said she was “shocked” how little the guards make.
Paul Bass Photo
Hillhouse School Resource Officer James Baker.
The grant for more cops would secure $3,105,855 from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS). The money would hire 15 cops for three years.
Rob Smuts, the New Haven government’s chief administrative officer, said the city is looking to have to new 40-person classes of rookie cops over the next year and a half or two years. Fifteen of those 80 new cops would be paid for by the federal grant and would head to New Haven public schools as school resource officers.
The city currently has only seven school resource officers, said Sandy Koorejian, a grant writer for the police department.
Smuts said it hasn’t yet been determined which schools the new cops would be assigned to.
As a general matter, I'm not a fan of uniformed police in schools. It makes them seem more like prisons and less like learning institutions. It is generally hard to argue with three years worth of funding for 15 police officers, but what happens after three years? Are we stuck with an additional $3.1+ million tab for the officers? Sometimes, free money isn't exactly free.
As to the crossing guards, their raise is relatively non-controversial. But again, I'd also like to suggest proper training of the crossing guards.