As children returned to class this week, parents noticed something a little different on their walks to and from school; a lack of crossing guards at a number of locations across the city.
The lack of the critical safety measure has some parents up in arms and furious with the City of Cambridge as they struggle to fill vacant positions.
"They need to do something, it's the first day of school and we're already running into problems," said Tanja Pecnik, a concerned parent on her way to pick up her children from school.
Stopped at the busy intersection of Gatehouse Drive and Myers Road, Pecnik and a few other parents wait for the speeding cars to stop so they can cross to pick-up their kids.
"I think it's just unsafe. We've been here for a few minutes, no one has stopped and it's supposed to be a school zone, but everyone is speeding," commented Pecnik. "A kid got hit just up the road a few years ago and we're all still living with that, it's scary."
Parents in the area are worried that crossing Myers Road is dangerous, even for them, and not having a crossing guard will raise the chances of getting hit by a car exponentially.
Ward 7 Councillor Scott Hamilton has heard the complaints from residents and shares concerns around the safety of the children calling it, "the highest priority."
"To be clear, the City of Cambridge did not remove this position. It remains vacant, because no one has yet signed up for the role," added Hamilton. "If the pay is considered low, the 2-hour shifts inconsistent, or if there's a danger to a guard that might get hit by a car, that's a big turnoff for some potential applicants."
According to the Waterloo Region District School Board, the responsibility of filling these crossing guard positions lies solely with municipalities.
Signs at over 11 different crossings have been posted to inform parents and children that there will be no crossing guard until the position can be filled.
Hamilton agrees with parents that the city needs to communicate what's happening more effectively and advertise the positions with an explanation of how dire the situation is.
"The city needs to reach out more effectively to the community to let them know these roles actually exist and need to be filled," he said. "They're perfect jobs for a retiree, a student, or someone just looking for a side-hustle where they make some extra cash while doing a tremendous social good for the community."
In the months leading up to the upcoming school year the City of Cambridge has only made one post on social media about vacant crossing guard positions.
This post was made on Sept. 6, the first day of school for many students.
"There's been nothing that I've seen from the city saying they need crossing guards, it would have been nice to not find this out when I'm walking my kids to school for the first day," said Pecnik.
Cambridge Ward 8 Councillor, Nicholas Ermeta is confident that the city will be able to fill all the positions as soon as possible.
Ermeta said some parents have put forth ideas to increase wages or responsibilities for crossing guards to make the job more enticing.
"While this can be reviewed there would be budget implications as a result of that and there are other demands such as better park maintenance and more traffic calming on streets to reduce speeding," said Ermeta in an email to CambridgeToday.
"The community will have to determine what kinds of services they'd want to increase the most and we would take that into consideration going forward."
Hamilton wants to see the root causes whether they be higher pay, more responsibilities or longer hours identified and addressed.
"This might involve higher pay, better safety equipment, and more consistent hours, all things I am now taking to staff to examine in more detail," he added.
With Myers Road being regionally owned, the Region of Waterloo has proposed significant safety changes to improve visibility and shorten crossing distances, but these changes are still a few years away.
Shannon Noonan, manager of transportation engineering with the City of Cambridge thinks all of the positions will be covered in the coming weeks as they start advertising these positions.
Noonan attributes the staffing shortage to the shortened hours, inconsistency of work (school closures) due to the pandemic and the nature of the work.
"It's an incredibly important role, and if what we're currently doing to attract and retain crossing guards isn't working, then we need to go back to the drawing board and fix it immediately. Our kids depend on this," said Hamilton.
"It's frustrating that something that seems so simple, a crossing a road to get to school, can become so dangerous and complex. So let's fix this for our kids, and let's fix it immediately. We have no time to lose."
While the parents wait for the city to find and hire new crossing guards, they will have to continue to cross busy roads and send their children to cross without any safety measures in place.
"I feel like they could easily just put up a stop sign or something if they can't find anyone. I don't think they understand how dangerous this can be, they won't until someone get's hit," said Pecnik.
