Lehighton Area School District and Lehighton Borough are looking to get on the same page regarding crossing guard plans for the upcoming school year.

On Monday night, representatives from each entity were finally in the same room to discuss how to address personnel shortages that have been leaving several key intersections unmanned.

“Our goal is to make sure things are safe for the students,” Councilman Ryan Saunders said. “We had two locations, one of them being at 11th and Mahoning streets by the elementary center, that were vacant all year long last year. Over the course of the last school year, we had 135 crossing guard shifts go uncovered.”

Lehighton Borough has historically handled the scheduling of crossing guards and pays 40% of the cost, while the school district picks up the remaining 60%.

“What is happening is that we are short staffed in our police department as it is and when a crossing guard calls off, we have to try and get an officer to cover that post,” Saunders said. “Sometimes we can do that and sometimes we can’t.”

School Board President Joy Beers said the district wants to work with the borough, whether that means assisting them in filling vacant shifts or taking over the administrative end of assigning the crossing guards altogether.

Lehighton Acting Superintendent Jack Corby said the two sides need to “act fast” to get a process lined up for the upcoming school year.

“We just need to sit down and hash it out so you have something to take back to borough council and we have something to put before the school board,” Corby said.

Saunders and Lehighton Councilwoman Autumn Abelovsky said the discussion between the borough and school district doesn’t mean that any current crossing guard will lose their job. In fact, quite the opposite is true.

“We definitely want to keep the ones we have and we need more of them to apply,” Abelovsky said. “I think things got blown out of proportion initially. We just don’t have the ability to find substitutes right now and want to work with the district to see how the best way is to address this.”

At Monday night’s Lehighton Borough Council meeting, the crossing guard situation was briefly discussed.

Abelovsky said both sides are on the same page, and that they plan to meet with them again.

Saunders said both parties are open to discussion, and that they plan to provide crossing guards.

Terry Ahner contributed to this report.