STOWE TOWNSHIP (KDKA) — Stowe Township has cut five of its eight crossing guards.

Since school started last week, Kelly Cropper-Hall, vice president of the school board, says she’s been unfairly inundated calls and visits to her home by angry parents.

“School crossing guards fall under the public safety,” she said. “That is a township issue not a school board issue.”

Howard Duerr, president of Stowe Township Commissioners, didn’t want to go on camera.

He told KDKA the problem is that when the crossing guards call off sick, the township has to replace them with their already small police force because they’re employed by the township.

“We need to come together with the school board and with the commissioners to sit down and iron this out,” Louis “Robin” Parrilla, a Stowe Township Commissioner, said. “We cannot use the public, the school students as pawns as we are using them. It’s unacceptable.”

Commissioner Duerr says the school district can have all the crossing guards they want if the district would pass an ordinance to employ the guards so they will be responsible for replacing them if they call off– and the township won’t abandon their police force creating a safety issue.

But parents also see a safety issue for their kids.

“Up on 13th Street, it’s a bad situation,” Debbie DaLoiso, a parent, said. “Somebody is definitely gonna get killed if something’s not done.”

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