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Crossing guard approved for South Surrey school

School board grants East Kensington request for crossing guard
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East Kensington Elementary will get a crossing guard this fall.

Students at East Kensington Elementary have been assured a safer passage to learning, following a commitment by the Surrey School Board to hire a crossing guard for the South Surrey school.

“Staff couldn’t have done anything without the board’s direction,” trustee Laurae McNally explained Thursday of a motion she made June 6 to authorize the hire.

“I didn’t want parents worrying about it all summer. We needed to do something, so I did it.”

Peace Arch News reported in March on parents’ concerns with the safety of getting their children across 184 Street to the heritage school. They said they had been asking for help for at least five years, due to drivers ignoring school-zone speed limits and even the flashing amber lights of a pedestrian-activated crosswalk.

“They don’t care,” parent Dannie Caron told PAN at the time.

District officials at that time assured a review of the situation.

In the interim, the district’s Safe Schools staff were assigned to monitor the crosswalk.

McNally said she knew even before the traffic study came back that the vehicle numbers wouldn’t justify a crossing guard.

Knowing speeding was the issue, she proposed her motion. It received unanimous support, she said. And that means students returning to East Kensington classrooms in September for the 2013-2014 school year will be greeted by a crossing guard “forever more,” she said.

 

“The moms and dads do their part,” McNally said. “But we need to get (the kids) through the door so that they can learn. I think all the trustees on the board want to ensure that kiddies get through the door safely.”

 

 



Tracy Holmes

About the Author: Tracy Holmes

Tracy Holmes has been a reporter with Peace Arch News since 1997.
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