When students walked to West Springfield High School on Monday morning (Aug. 31), they found a new tool to get the attention of rush-hour commuters along Rolling Road and Grigsby Drive, thanks to concerned community members.
On Sunday, Aug. 30, a small group of West Springfield parents and students had gathered to install small buckets on traffic signs. Those buckets hold large orange flags that pedestrians can carry while crossing Rolling Road.
“People are so nervous to cross the street because they’re worried they’re going to get hit,” said Lillian Johnson, a sophomore, as she and another member of her Girl Scout troop waited to help install the buckets at West Springfield. “It’s always super busy in the mornings.”
The flagging initiative was developed by community members in response to the removal of crossing guards from several Fairfax County public high schools, including West Springfield (6100 Rolling Road).
To address police staffing challenges and fiscal concerns, the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors approved a budget in May that reduced funding for the Fairfax County Police Department’s crossing guard program by $1.89 million. In addition to eliminating high school crossing guards, the county switched to hiring contractors to fill vacant elementary and middle school crossing guard positions instead of relying on uniformed police officers.
The budget cuts affected 10 schools: Annandale, Centreville, Chantilly, Edison, McLean, Oakton, South County, South Lakes, West Potomac and West Springfield high schools.
However, as soon as the new school year began on Aug. 24, reports emerged of chaotic traffic and near-misses at several high schools where crossing guards had been removed, culminating in a student getting struck by a car outside South Lakes High School in Reston yesterday (Tuesday).
After days of mounting pressure on local officials to reverse the budget cut or implement other emergency safety measures, the FCPD said today (Wednesday) that crossing guard services are being “temporarily reinstated” at all 10 previously staffed high schools, including West Springfield.
Directed by the Board of Supervisors last week to provide more information about the impacts of the crossing guard changes, county staff had identified West Springfield, Edison, South Lakes, Centreville and West Potomac as the high schools with the most complicated traffic conditions, they told supervisors at a budget policy committee meeting yesterday.
West Springfield High School is unique in some ways: it has a more permanent infrastructure change in the works, with the Virginia Department of Transportation planning to construct new traffic and pedestrian signals at Rolling Road and Grisby Drive in 2029.
“I’ve got West Springfield officers that say they hate having to do the overtime at West Springfield because it’s too dangerous for them,” Springfield District Supervisor Pat Herrity, who voted against the budget’s adoption, said at a Budget Policy Committee meeting yesterday. “And [if] it is too dangerous for uniformed policemen to direct traffic, to me, it’s too dangerous for our kids to cross.”
But before the county decided to temporarily restore the guards, West Springfield parents decided to act on their own.
“I started looking at what other communities are doing when they lose their crossing guards because someone had figured this out before,” said Tamara O’Neil, who organized the flagging initiative. (She is also running for the school board against West Springfield Representative Sandy Anderson.)
The orange flags are already used in nearby jurisdictions such as Arlington and Falls Church. They’re meant to make students and other pedestrians more visible to drivers as they look to cross Rolling Road, which averages about 22,000 vehicles per day, according to VDOT. Some elementary schools in Fairfax County already use them for secondary, high-traffic areas that are not covered by their crossing guards.
Private donors were willing to cover the cost of installing the flags and buckets at West Springfield, and O’Neil, a member of the West Springfield PTSA, says she reached out to Herrity’s office to obtain permission before adding them.
“PTAs can’t pay for crossing guards, but they can pay for signage,” said O’Neil. “They can pay for things that can make things safer for schools. And these crossing guard kits, these crosswalk flags, are something that absolutely PTAs can pay for. They’re very inexpensive. They’re $200, and they can be put up within minutes.”
Still, O’Neil saw the flag effort as a stop-gap solution.
“The whole point of the flags and getting the community involved was that we could not sit on the side and watch this happen,” she said this morning, as she celebrated the news that a crossing guard had temporarily been restored to the school.
“Our next fight,” she added, is implementing “a permanent solution.”
Herrity agrees.
“While the flag kits are popping up across the County specifically at busy intersections help pedestrian visibility I do not believe they are [a] long term solution or a valid replacement for crossing guards at many of our high schools,” he told FFXnow in an email. “While commendable and helpful, it is unfortunate that our residents are having to find a solution to protect their children when some members of the Board that felt it was a reasonable action to eliminate crossing guards.
“I am hoping the Board accepts my Consideration Item to restore funding for the crossing guards at its meeting on September 15th,” Herrity continued. “In addition, I am working to accelerate installation of a traffic light at Grigsby and Rolling which we were finally able to get approved and funded.”
