Dallas Sues Bus Agency Over Its Plans to End School Crossing Guard Program Next Month

The dissolution of Dallas County Schools just got a little uglier, with the embattled school-bus agency now locked in a legal battle with the city of Dallas over its crossing-guard program — specifically, who will run it and how to pay for it come Jan. 31.The week before Christmas, the state-appointed committee tasked with dissolving DCS said it would be ending the crossing-guard program at the end of January. "We simply don't have the money to run the program," CEO Alan King said Friday. "We're just trying to make it to the end of the year providing reliable transportation services for the kids, and this is money we don't have."DCS currently has 388 crossing guards, the vast majority of whom are for Dallas ISD schools, though the program also serves a handful of others area districts as well as some charters and Catholic schools. It costs nearly $5 million a year to pay those crossing guards, twice what it cost in 2011, the year before Dallas turned over operations to DCS.  Continue reading...