FLASHING STOP SIGNS

Blackhawk Golden K of Janesville, WI

Crossing guards in the Janesville, WI area will have a stronger presence in the crosswalks thanks to the vision of the K-Kids club of Lincoln Elementary School. In the spring of 2008, a memorial for Elmer Lipke (member of our club and K-Kids advisor) provided a new flashing stop sign (BlinkerPaddles® from TAPCO) to be used by the crossing guard at the school. At the next K-Kids meeting, the kids told how much safer it was to cross the street where the guard used that flashing sign, compared to the two other supervised street crossings they used.

Drivers noticed the stop sign that blinked!

They wanted to buy two more signs for the other locations and talked about how kids at other schools could be safer if every crossing guard had a flashing stop sign. In conjunction with their advisor (Bob Johnson), it then became their goal to try and obtain a flashing stop sign for each crossing guard in the city. Working toward their goal, they used money from their Box Tops for Education collections and asked the K-Kids from Roosevelt Elementary School and the Builders Club from Edison Middle School to join them in this project. Reaching further, they asked our sponsoring Kiwanis clubs for help, and approached Wal Mart and Sam's club for matching grants. On December 17, 2008, about 100 people and local civic leaders attended the celebration where the K-Kids and Builders Club gave away 25 Tapco LED flashing stop signs! Twenty-one were given to police department for school crossing guards in Janesville, and two each to the police departments in neighboring Milton and Clinton WI for their crossing guards.

Because of the combined efforts of the students in the K-Kids, Builders Club, and Kiwanis clubs in Janesville, thousands of children will have safer journeys to and from school. It would be nice if other communities made it their goal to get flashing stop signs for their crossing guards.