Meet Sharon Land. She’s one of many poorly paid crossing guards who keep our children safe. | Opinion
Sharon Land is armed with only a red-lit traffic wand, until the sun brings enough light for drivers to see her hand-held “STOP” sign. Even with children everywhere and “school zone” traffic limits in effect, harried drivers sometimes zip past Maxwell Elementary at speed, often skipping through yellow lights, and too often making illegal, last-second merges away from Maxwell’s last “right-turn-only” lane.
These distracted dashers, their destinations pre-programmed and their minds elsewhere, might not notice Miss Sharon even on a sun-brightened afternoon. Pre-dawn morning darkness seems designed for cars to hit the nearly invisible pedestrians — our children, and the crossing guards trying to protect them.
Car hitting guard is exactly what happened in Boyle County, on the first day back to school this year. And in Jessamine County last October. And in Campbell County in 2017. And in Pulaski County in 2016. Four school crossing guard strikes across the Commonwealth, over eight years, found with a single, 15-second Google search.
A University of Delaware facilities publication suggested school crossing guards are among the nation’s most endangered workers. The number of Kentucky pedestrians killed at work between 2015 and 2019, including crossing guards, prompted a 2021 “hazard alert” from the Kentucky Occupational Safety and Health Surveillance (KOSHS) project. No one can count how many times the touches between crossing guards and rushing cars go unreported.
Miss Sharon has dodged at least a half-dozen cars just in the short seconds I’ve watched her, days in and out over the past three years. Sharon marches there two full hours, every school day, before moving to the next dangerous school crossing.
Sharon Land keeps hundreds of Lexington’s children safe every day, rain or shine or arctic dome’s blistering winds. But she’s also an artist without a patron, a part-time hourly employee of the Lexington Police Department outside of collective bargaining protections, who got skipped by the recent windfall raises rightly enjoyed around Lexington’s public safety community.
Our crossing guards risk life and limb to protect our kids from our own distracted driving. Yet we pay them less than many delivery drivers, a whopping $14 per hour for 20 hours every school week, rain or shine or tundra blast. Surpluses must be invested for inevitably returning lean days, true. But paying our life-saving crossing guards a bit more to stand between our kids and inattentive drivers is an investment, in the communities of today and our next generation.
We can do better for these essential workers, especially while budget surplus allows long overdue raises.
Sharon’s well-kept yellow rain boots don’t show the scores of miles she marches each year, half a crosswalk at a time. She always wears the yellow safety vest when crossing kids, even if it’s under her yellow rain coat, or the polar survival gear. And she is always, always the one standing between our kids and drivers not paying sufficient attention to the heavy machinery we’re operating.
We need to invest in Sharon and every community servant like her. This includes eventually investing in more traffic patrols and traffic flow changes, once LPD’s own staffing and murder investigation crises get resolved. In the meantime, paying these literal life-savers a slightly better hourly wage seems the least recognition we can offer.
Jay Hurst is an attorney in Lexington.
