String of students struck by cars, including one fatality, reignites outrage over Fairfax County’s removal of crossing guards

Nearly half a dozen Fairfax County Public Schools students — either walking or commuting by bike or e-scooter — have been hit by cars in separate accidents, including three that happened on the same day, one of which resulted in a student’s death.The string of incidents, occurring just three weeks into the new school year, is renewing outrage over the county’s decision in May to remove all crossing guards at the district’s high schools in order to offset spending increases elsewhere.But the county insists there is “no correlation,” at least between the three crashes on Wednesday, which all involved either elementary or middle school students, and the elimination of high school crossing guards. However, the first crash from last week injured a high school student walking to class, and the Washington Examiner has learned that a fifth student, an 11th grader, was struck by a vehicle late Thursday afternoon.Who’s at fault? When contacted by the Washington Examiner, a spokesperson for FCPS clarified that the three crashes on Wednesday did not occur near where crossing guards were removed as part of the budgeting process.The FCPS spokesperson, however, stressed that the decision to remove the district’s high school crossing guards was made by the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, not the school board.To save $1.89 million, the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors approved the removal of all 13 full-time crossing guard positions at area high schools after the county’s police department, which is responsible for providing school crossing guards, proposed the budget cut as an agency reduction. FCPD school-crossings budget presentation for fiscal 2027. (Fairfax County Board of Supervisors) “The Fairfax County Police Department, like all County agencies, participated in a mandatory budget reduction exercise that resulted in a fiscal decision to eliminate crossing guards at County high schools,” FCPD’s public affairs office told the Washington Examiner. “The decision was informed by available safety data and academic research and was consistent with practices in surrounding jurisdictions.”In the budget proposal, FCPD cited challenges with fully staffing the school crossing guard program. The staffing shortage of traditional crossing guards, who are employees of the police department but not sworn officers, has forced uniform police officers to cover vacancies through overtime and while on duty, which significantly increased program costs and diverted officers from their core policing duties.Police are continuing to operate the crossing-guard stations at FCPS middle and elementary schools, but proposed contracting out services to a private crossing-guard company, rather than deploying uniformed police officers to backfill vacant shifts.Melanie Meren, a member of Fairfax County School Board, said the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors has been trying over the past two years to offload the responsibility of school crosswalk duties from its police department.Meren and other school board members strongly opposed the county board’s decision at the time to nix the high school crossing guard patrol entirely and have been fighting to restore them since the start of the school year.In fact, Meren had flagged the “chaotic and dangerous” street conditions surrounding South Lakes High School a week before one student was struck by a car while walking to the school on the seventh day of classes. The teenage victim, who had to be hospitalized, was sent airborne, and the driver was charged with failing to stop before entering a highway.FCPD said the 16-year-old, however, was not in a crosswalk when he was hit on the way to school, but the accident site was about a block away from the old post of the crossing guard ordinarily assigned to that area.South Lakes has a high volume of traffic, along with features in the road that decrease visibility. So in that case, Meren said in an interview with the Washington Examiner, removing the crossing guard there simply to cut costs was “an extremely poor decision.”Meren told the Washington Examiner that hours before the school board was scheduled to meet on Thursday evening, another crash occurred, the second to involve a teenager.An 11th grader at Lake Braddock Secondary School, located along Burke Lake Road, suffered a minor injury to the leg after the teenage bicyclist collided with a vehicle trying to cross Burke Lake Road. It is unclear if the accident, the most recent of the five and the fourth student-involved roadway incident in two days, happened at a designated school crosswalk, although that FCPS school was not affected by the county’s guard removal.“The Commonwealth of Virginia and Fairfax County are failing to protect our students,” Fairfax County School Board member Mateo Dunne said.Dunne told the Washington Examiner that the school district invited the Fairfax County Transportation Department and the Virginia Department of Transportation to participate in 16 pedestrian and traffic safety assessments, but they declined to participate.Similar to Meren’s own on-the-ground observational work, Dunne also recently deployed staff to document student travel conditions around several FCPS high schools.According to the latest edition of his community newsletter, titled “The Dunne Dispatch,” they found insufficient signage at many schools, vehicles traveling at excessive speed while traffic enforcement was lacking, and drivers driving aggressively.Dunne reported that his staffers witnessed drivers endangering students by driving around school buses, even when the stop arm is extended and students are actively boarding or disembarking, as well as cars rolling onto the crosswalk while students are crossing the street.“This short-sighted budget decision,” Dunne said of the county board’s vote to eliminate high school crossing guards, “endangered vulnerable students who bike and walk to school every day.”County board disputes correlation between budget cut and recent crashes Jeffrey McKay, chairman of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, said that Wednesday’s crashes in particular cannot be attributed to the board’s decision to slash funding for high school crossing guards.“As we respond to these incidents, it is also important to be clear about the facts,” McKay told the Washington Examiner in a statement provided Thursday, prior to the fifth crash. “There is no correlation between yesterday’s incidents and the removal of crossing guards at Fairfax County high schools.”McKay specified that the FCPS student killed around 2:30 p.m. on Wednesday was in middle school and that the fatal pedestrian crash occurred in the city of Fairfax, outside of the county’s jurisdiction. Fairfax city police reported that the 13-year-old was riding a bicycle before being fatally struck by a large truck leaving a shopping center.“There is also no information indicating that either of the other two separate incidents [on Wednesday] occurred at high schools or locations impacted by this change,” McKay said.County police confirmed to the Washington Examiner that of the two additional crashes handled by FCPD on Wednesday, only one happened on school property while the other incident did not occur near a school or school crossing. Both students appeared to be either elementary- or middle school-aged.Police say that morning, a vehicle turning into a school parking lot close to Brookfield Elementary School made “minimal contact” with an 11-year-old traveling on an e-scooter while she was in the crosswalk. The student was able to jump off the scooter and avoid injury. The second crash, occurring in the afternoon and involving a vehicle and a 13-year-old on a bike, happened beyond school bounds. The child sustained minor injuries and was transported to a local hospital for evaluation.“We understand the concerns surrounding high school crossing guards and remain committed to working collaboratively on solutions,” McKay added. “At the same time, it is important that we do not conflate that separate issue with these incidents.”McKay mentioned that Fairfax County has committed $100 million to building out bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure and noted related investments, such as expanded school-zone speed cameras and school bus stop-arm cameras.“Transportation safety remains a top priority,” McKay said, “and we will continue working with our partners to identify ways to make our roads safer for pedestrians, bicyclists and everyone who uses them.”Spending priorities under scrutiny McKay said that FCPS received $26 million in recurring state funding following the county budget’s approval, with full discretion over how to allocate those funds, including the ability to use a portion for high school crossing guards.Some community members, meanwhile, are increasingly questioning the school district’s spending habits in light of the crossing-guard cuts, pointing to six-figure administrator salaries and other job perks that FCPS did find funds for despite claiming to face a multimillion-dollar shortfall of its own.“The recent accidents in Fairfax County are horrific and represent every parent’s worst nightmare,” said Stephanie Lundquist-Arora, a Fairfax County mother. “FCPS leaders are failing at their most fundamental responsibility: keeping our children safe.”FAIRFAX COUNTY PUBLIC SCHOOLS BUCKLES AMID SCANDALS, FURIOUS PARENTS, AND BUDGETING CRUNCHAccording to FCPS salary data obtained by Lundquist-Arora, who has been closely monitoring the county’s finances, the school district currently employs over 1,500 administrative officers whose wages totaled $187 million in the 2025-26 academic year.Lundquist-Arora found that dozens of district administrators make more than $200,000 a year. Of the highest-paid school administrators, FCPS Superintendent Michelle Reid raked in roughly $445,000 last year and has a full-time personal security detail providing her round-the-clock protection from morning to night.“It is an absolute travesty that district leaders appear more concerned about protecting the superintendent than protecting our children,” Lundquist-Arora told the Washington Examiner.Crossing guards temporarily returned The county temporarily reinstated the high school crossing guard positions after last week’s initial traffic accident, but FCPD officers are filling in.Meren questioned why sworn police are serving in place of the crossing guard personnel.“The county has said from the start that this is a budgetary matter; that the crossing guards were cut because of budget needs,” Meren said. “My understanding is it is less money to pay an hourly crossing guard than to pay a uniformed police officer. So now we have police officers managing intersections at our high schools. It’s very unclear why the county is doing what it is and what data it’s using to make decisions.”FCPD said, “Our renewed crossing guard presence at County high schools reflects community expectations and our ongoing commitment to pedestrian safety,” adding, “We will continue working with our partners to identify traffic and pedestrian safety solutions that address the complexity of this challenge.”With a total of 328 daily crossings to monitor, accounting for the start of the school day and dismissal times across 164 different crosswalks, police have said that reassigning officers to handle traffic duty is an enormous strain on resources.The money for the reinstated crossing guard posts has not been budgeted out and would have to be pulled from year-end funds. At a Sept. 15 meeting, the county board will consider authorizing carryover funding to keep the high school crossing guards in place the rest of the academic year.“We remain optimistic that this important safety measure will become permanent once again following next week’s Board of Supervisors meeting,” an FCPS spokesperson told the Washington Examiner.The carryover package, however, would just cover funding for the remainder of the 2026-27 school year. There would still need to be another discussion about permanently restoring high school crossing guards for the following fiscal cycles.Dunne urged both the county board and the school board to establish a new Vision Zero plan, a roadway safety system that aims to eliminate all pedestrian injuries and deaths.In addition, Dunne suggested that VDOT and FCDOT, in collaboration with Fairfax County schools, conduct a comprehensive audit of all school crosswalks and school zones to ensure that the traffic signage and signals are sufficiently protecting students during a period of rampant distracted and dangerous driving.“At a minimum, there should be a pedestrian-activated flashing signal at every school crosswalk, along with a school crossing guard to protect our students and ensure every student returns home safely,” Dunne said.