Former Newmarket crossing guard Julie Lennick hung up her reflective vest over safety concerns and what she said was a lack of support.
Lennick had worked as a crossing guard since October 2021 at the corner of London Road and Burford Street, near Denne Public School.
She said she was looking for extra income to pay for boarding her horse and saw an ad in the paper and decided to apply.
However, Lennick said she resigned in April because she no longer felt safe doing the job.
"I was starting to hate getting up in the morning and going there. And I love the kids and I liked the moms and, you know, I miss seeing them but I don't miss going there and being scared every day," she said.
Almost daily since starting the job, she said drivers sped through the intersection — some not even stopping at all at the stop sign — while she was still taking children across.
"The main problem was that corner, London can be really, really busy," she said. "It's a four-way stop sign and people continuously go through the stop sign or do rolling stops."
Lennick said the drivers themselves need to make changes for it to be safer but she also thinks there could be changes made like adding a stop light to make the crossing safer.
"I was stuck with a bad corner," she said.
She also said she wanted more support from the Town of Newmarket, which employs crossing guards.
"I just felt left alone just to do whatever I could do in my own defence," she said.
She added that she would raise safety concerns to the town and felt like nothing was happening as a result. She also said the policy was for crossing guards to report any incidents to York Regional Police directly.
When reporting incidents online, Lennick said it was a lengthy process and she had to make sure she had descriptions of the vehicles or licence plate information, which wasn't always easy to get while crossing with the children. She said it was also time consuming.
"It would take me probably half an hour of my own time, at least half an hour, to do it and I didn't always get anything back from them," she said.
Peter Noehammer, development and infrastructure commissioner with the town, said reporting directly to YRP is the standard procedure but crossing guards are also encouraged to inform their supervisor of any incidents, such as a driver running a stop sign.
"The reason we do that, rather than do that ourselves is because the police prefer to deal directly with the eyewitness," he said. "Our supervisors will also want to hear about aggressive driving infractions that they see because they'll want to understand a little bit better themselves, go there and have a look."
He said if one particular intersection is identified as challenging or as seeing a large number of incidents, there are steps the Town of Newmarket can take to review it for additional traffic safety measures but that process would have to be requested.
"If there's a location where the provision of crossing guard isn't sufficient for crossing at various times of the day or there's additional steps required because of the size of the intersection the town does investigations to determine if warrants are met for higher order measures, such as pedestrian crosswalks or traffic signals," he said.
There are currently 27 crossing guards employed by the town.
According to Noehammer, when each is initially hired, they are trained and educated on proper procedures, instructed on what to do if there is an incident, and given a training manual. He said there are additional safety measures of high-visibility vests and an electronic whistle that crossing guards use while working.
"We want to thank all crossing guards for their service, their passion, their dedication to keep our children safe and sound as they journey to and from school. We'd love to have as many crossing guards return season after season and we want to make sure that they feel safe and want to support them as we would with any staff," Noehammer said.
However, Lennick is one crossing guard who will not be returning to the role again.
"I can only hope that things change in the future, but unfortunately for me, I can no longer continue," she said.
