During a special meeting this week, the Bradford Area School District board of education voted to add crossing guards to its payroll, and passed a resolution to eliminate the latchkey program, in its present state.

On Tuesday, Superintendent Katharine Pude said the latchkey program, which provides early morning and after-school care for elementary-age children, will now be offered through the Bradford Family YMCA at George G. Blaisdell Elementary School and School Street Elementary School.

“We have always offered Latchkey as a service to our parents for before and after school, but we had a couple of retirements (of staff) this year and didn’t want to cut the program,” Pude said, noting parents pay a fee for the service. “Even though we’re one of the only school districts to have such a program we didn’t want to cut any services for our parents.”

She noted the YMCA expressed an interest in taking over the program with its staff.

“They are able to offer parents different options that we aren’t able to offer,” Pude continued. “They’ll still use our facilities and the program will still run at the same hours it did before.”

Pude said notices will be sent to parents regarding changes that include the YMCA’s staff operation of the program which provides activities and snacks for children of working parents.

For his part, school board president Shane Oschman said the latchkey program changes, “should be seamless, other than (the school district) will not be running it.”

As for the crossing guard changes in the school district, Pude said this is another service that will continue to be offered, but in a different format.

“We always contracted for our crossing guards, but that is no longer available to us this year,” Pude said of the program previously provided through an organization operated by Steve Cavallaro.

“He decided he’s not going to have that service (for crossing guards) anymore,” Pude said of Cavallaro. “I think he was doing that as a service to the community … and we appreciated the years that we had (the service) but he informed us that he wasn’t able to do it this year. So, we’re going to have our own crossing guards.”

She said the board voted in favor of adding crossing guards on the payroll at School Street Elementary and some areas of Floyd C. Fretz Middle School, and has advertised for applicants.

Pude said the crossing guard applicants, as with other employees in the district, must have and pass background checks before being considered for employment.