Crossing guard contract for DeKalb schools due for extension, pay increase says Aurora-based staff provider

DeKALB – About a 9% pay increase could be in order for the crossing guards enlisted by DeKalb District 428 schools.

At its meeting this week, the school board was briefed by members of the district’s administration that a contract with Aurora-based Andy Frain Services, Inc., which provides crossing guard services, is due for an extension.

Armir Doka, the district’s co-director of business and finance, made an appeal to the school board asking for support of the administration’s recommendation.

“There’s not too many companies out there, so we want to continue and extend services with them,” Doka said.

The district had only two bid for the crossing guard contract in 2018, the last time competitors were sought, officials said.

The estimated cost of the extended contract would be $21.51 billed hourly, or $160,938 for the 2023-24 school year, making for a 9.02% increase year over year, according to school board documents. The district is billed at $19.73 per hour for the 2022-23 school year.

Doka attributes a large part of the proposed contract extension increase to the district needing to satisfy the state of Illinois’ new minimum wage requirements.

“The minimum wage increase is growing from $13 to $14 on January [1], 2024,” Doka said. “That’s about 7%, so you can see that most of it is coming from that.”

Cindy Carpenter, the district’s director of business and finance, acknowledged that hiring crossing guards can be a challenge but said contracting for services from Andy Frain Services has proven to be beneficial to the district.

“It’s just a couple and basically an hour in the mornings and the afternoons and then we have the crossing guard intersections for the elementaries as well as for the middle schools,” Carpenter said. “A couple of them have two crossing guards to help out. [There’s] not a lot of them, vendors in this space. They have worked with us very well, even through COVID and everything. They were very flexible.”

A contract extension, if approved, would be effective through the 2023-24 school year, school board documents show.

The school board is expected to put the contract to a vote during the board’s May 2 meeting.