The Prince George's County Council on Jan. 28, 2025 received a briefing on the School Pedestrian Safety work group’s final report and recommendations, developed after five meetings and completed in December 2024.

The report, assembled under resolution CR 9 (2024) and extended by CR 78 to a December 2024 deadline, proposes 18 recommendations intended to reduce pedestrian risk around county schools. Arianne Aubert, director of the Education and Workforce Development Committee staff, told the council the work group formed after the November 2023 deaths of two Riverdale Elementary School students and that Prince George's County remains among the deadliest jurisdictions for pedestrians in the Baltimore–Washington region.

The recommendations cover infrastructure, evaluation and education: require pedestrian-safety infrastructure at the time of school construction; launch a countywide accessibility evaluation for PGCPS (Prince George’s County Public Schools) campuses; create a unified walk-audit template; set up proactive interagency coordination; establish safe-passage coordinators; create an objective pedestrian safety risk measure for schools; set PGCPS internal goals and timelines for audits; and engage school communities and boards on safety work. The report also calls for lowering speed limits around schools, traffic-calming measures and temporary street restrictions during drop-off and pickup, expanded education campaigns, walking school buses, an annual youth transportation safety summit beginning April 2025, and bilingual (Spanish/English) pedestrian-safety materials for high-risk areas.

Other items in the report include incentivizing municipal police departments to provide crossing-guard subcontracting support to increase coverage, partnering with the Prince George’s County Arts & Humanities Council on street-art crosswalk projects, and recognizing Ruby Bridges Walk to School Day (Nov. 14) as a county/PGCPS event.

“A unified metric system will let us rank schools by objective need so resources can be prioritized,” council member Wenneca Fisher, who co-led the work group, said during the briefing. Eric Olson, the group’s other co-lead, thanked community participants and urged the council to fund recommendations. “I do hope we can follow the recommendations and that this body will put money into the things that need to be done to increase the safety and walkability for our school children,” Olson said.

Council member Mary Lehgett (spelling as spoken in transcript) asked whether the work group conducted a systematic study of where pedestrian crossings are most dangerous; staff said the county police provided crossing-guard locations but the work group did not perform a new, countywide statistical study and instead recommended a risk-measure and walk-audit template to produce a merit-based priority list.

Council members and staff cited sample resources and contributors to the work group, including Strong Towns, Coalition for Smarter Growth, the U.S. Department of Education, Washington Area Bicyclists Association, the Prince George’s County Arts & Humanities Council, the county police department and Department of Public Works and Transportation (DPW&T).

Fisher urged colleagues to treat at least one item—crossing-guard coverage—as a budget priority in the next budget cycle so municipal police and crossing-guard arrangements can be funded. Council member Ingrid Watson publicly thanked Chief Aziz of the police department for providing crossing-guard support this past year.

No formal council vote on the work group recommendations was recorded at the Jan. 28 briefing; the session was a presentation and questions period. Council members indicated some recommendations could be implemented administratively while others might require legislation or budget allocations.

The work group’s final report (December 2024) lists each recommendation with the suggested implementing body, a general timeframe and a brief justification. The report notes the first work-group meeting occurred in July 2024, and the final document includes a nonexhaustive list of tools and community resources for local implementation.