Arbor View Crosswalk Safety Gap | Ryan Rose

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A volunteer crossing guard working outside Arbor View High School in northwest Las Vegas says she was nearly struck by vehicles several times in a single day, including once by a parent who was looking at a phone. Her name is Krista Holloway, and she founded a group called Walk Safely LV.

She is not a paid crossing guard. She is a volunteer standing in a crosswalk because the coverage there has been short, and families in the area decided to fill the gap themselves.

That is the core of this story, and it is a safety issue rather than a headline about one bad morning. When adults with no training, no uniform requirement, and no protection are the last line between students and traffic, the system has a hole in it. This article is about that hole and what can be done about it.

What Happened

News 3 Las Vegas reported on September 2, 2026 that Krista Holloway, the founder of Walk Safely LV, has been volunteering as a crossing guard outside Arbor View High School. Holloway said she was nearly hit several times over the course of one day while working the crosswalk.

One of those near misses involved a parent who was looking at a phone. That detail is the part that stuck with people, and it is worth stating plainly rather than dramatically. The drivers creating risk in a school zone are frequently the same parents dropping off and picking up students at that school.

Holloway is a volunteer. That means she is out there by choice, without the job title, the training pipeline, or the employment protections that come with a paid crossing guard position. Other families in the area have been stepping in the same way.

The reason volunteers are filling the role is coverage. Crossing guard coverage around the school has been short, and rather than wait, parents organized. That is admirable and it is also a symptom. Communities do not build volunteer traffic-control operations when the paid version is fully staffed.

It also matters that this happened at a high school. Elementary school crossings tend to get the most attention because the students are small and always accompanied. High school students cross on their own, in bigger groups, and often in a much larger volume of traffic. The assumption that teenagers can handle it themselves is part of why these crossings get less staffing.

The coverage of Holloway's experience came against the backdrop of the death of Arbor View senior McKenzie Scott, who was killed by an impaired driver while crossing near the school last year. Her death is why safety around this campus has stayed in the local conversation, and it is why parents in the area treat crosswalk staffing as urgent rather than routine.

The specific number of unfilled crossing guard posts around Arbor View, and the agency responsible for filling them, were not detailed in the reporting available for this story. [NOT VERIFIED: the exact staffing shortfall and the responsible agency for crossing guard assignments at this location.]

Why It Matters to Las Vegas Residents

Northwest Las Vegas is full of the exact conditions that make school zones risky. Wide arterial roads with high speed limits. Big high schools that release hundreds of students at once. Neighborhoods where most families drive. Add a compressed twenty-minute window at the start and end of the school day and you get a lot of vehicles and a lot of teenagers in the same space.

Arbor View sits in that pattern. So do plenty of other campuses in the northwest and across the valley. If you live in Centennial Hills, Skye Canyon, Providence, or any of the surrounding neighborhoods, you already know what the roads look like at 7:00 a.m. and at 2:30 p.m.

The distracted driving piece is the part every driver can act on today. Looking at a phone while rolling through a school zone is a decision, not an accident. A driver moving at even a modest speed covers a lot of ground in the two seconds it takes to glance down. In a crosswalk with students in it, two seconds is the whole margin.

There is also a fairness question. Volunteers filling a paid safety role means the level of protection at a given crosswalk depends on whether that particular school has parents with the time, flexibility, and organization to show up. Schools in neighborhoods where parents work shifts or hold multiple jobs will not generate the same volunteer coverage. Safety should not depend on which zip code has the most available free time.

Time of year matters too. School starts before sunrise in the winter months and afternoon glare hits hard on east-west streets in the valley. Low sun angles across a wide road can make a person in a crosswalk genuinely hard to see. Drivers who feel fine in September should assume conditions get worse in December and January, not better.

For homeowners, this is also a neighborhood quality issue. Walkability and school safety come up constantly when families choose where to live. Buyers ask whether kids can walk to school. If the honest answer in a given area involves an unstaffed crosswalk on a six-lane road, that affects how families feel about the street, and eventually how they feel about the house.

It is also worth being honest about how ordinary the behavior is. Almost everyone has glanced at a phone at a red light or checked a text while creeping forward in a pickup line. That is exactly what makes it dangerous. The risk does not come from reckless outliers. It comes from a large number of otherwise careful people doing a small unsafe thing at the same place and the same time every weekday morning.

And for anyone who drives through a school zone twice a day, the practical takeaway is simple. The person standing in that crosswalk may be somebody's mom who volunteered. Treat that crosswalk accordingly.

Background and History

Crossing guards are one of those pieces of public infrastructure that nobody thinks about until they are missing. They are typically part-time positions, split into a morning shift and an afternoon shift, at low pay, outdoors, in Las Vegas weather. That combination makes the role genuinely hard to staff and keep staffed, and shortages have been a recurring problem in a lot of communities, not just here.

The result is that some crossings get covered and some do not. Schools and parent groups end up making informal arrangements, and volunteers fill in where they can. That is how a founder of a pedestrian safety group ends up personally standing in a crosswalk outside a high school.

Walk Safely LV exists specifically because of that gap. Advocacy groups like it tend to form after a community experiences a loss, and they usually focus on the practical work of getting crossings staffed, getting signage and signals improved, and getting drivers to change behavior in school zones.

Pedestrian safety has been a persistent problem across Southern Nevada. The valley was built around wide, fast arterial roads designed to move cars efficiently. That design is very good at moving traffic and much less good at protecting people on foot, especially where a major road runs directly past a school.

Northwest Las Vegas grew fast, and that growth shaped the road network. Neighborhoods filled in around arterials that were laid out to carry a lot of cars quickly between the beltway and the far edges of the valley. Schools got built into those same corridors because that is where the families were. The road design and the school placement did not always get reconciled with each other.

Enforcement has been part of the response. CCSD police have increased traffic stops in school zones, which is a signal that the district recognizes the risk and is trying to change driver behavior. Enforcement helps, but it is one tool among several, and it cannot cover every crossing every day.

The loss of McKenzie Scott last year is the reason this school in particular has stayed in the conversation. Out of respect, this article will not go further into the details of that incident. What matters here is that the community around Arbor View has been asking for better crosswalk protection since then, and volunteers are what they have been able to put in place while they wait.

What Happens Next

The immediate question is whether the crossing at Arbor View gets consistent staffing. Volunteers can hold a gap for a while, but volunteer coverage is fragile by nature. People get sick, take jobs, and move. A crossing that depends on one committed person is one schedule change away from being empty.

Another thing to watch is whether the volunteer effort spreads or burns out. Groups like Walk Safely LV can only cover so many intersections with the people they have. If more parents step up at other campuses, the valley gets safer crossings but also a larger unpaid workforce doing public safety work. If volunteers burn out, the crossings go back to being empty. Neither outcome is a real fix.

The second thing to watch is enforcement. School zone enforcement tends to ramp up at the start of the school year and after high-profile incidents. Whether the increased attention in Clark County school zones holds through the winter and spring is a fair thing for residents to track and ask about.

Third, watch for infrastructure requests. When a crossing is identified as dangerous, the longer-term fixes are physical. Better lighting, high-visibility markings, pedestrian-activated flashing beacons, refuge islands, and signal timing changes all reduce risk without depending on a person standing in the road. Those changes run through Clark County and City of Las Vegas public works processes and often start with resident complaints.

There is also a policy layer at the state level. Nevada lawmakers have taken up distracted driving and pedestrian safety measures in past sessions, and school zone rules are the kind of thing that gets revisited after a community pushes for it. Residents who want changes beyond one intersection eventually end up in that conversation.

Finally, watch whether crossing guard staffing gets addressed as a budget and hiring issue rather than a volunteer issue. Shortages in low-paid part-time roles usually come down to pay, scheduling, and recruitment. Those are solvable problems, but they get solved when they are treated as budget priorities.

Ryan's Take

I have driven through Arbor View's area at pick-up time. Anyone who has knows the picture. Cars stacked up, kids crossing in groups, a lot of people in a hurry and a lot of people on their phones. It does not take an expert to see the risk.

What gets me about this story is not the near misses. It is that a volunteer is the one absorbing them. Somebody decided to stand in traffic so other people's kids could cross safely, and she got nearly hit multiple times in a day for it. That should be uncomfortable for all of us, and it should be a straightforward thing to fix.

On the real estate side, I will say this plainly. School walkability and safe crossings are real neighborhood features. Families ask me about them. When a community has to organize volunteers to make a crosswalk work, that is worth knowing before you buy on that street, and it is also worth knowing that engaged parents in a neighborhood is itself a good sign. The families around Arbor View are not ignoring this. They are showing up. I would rather live near people like that than near people who did nothing.

What You Can Do

The first thing, and the cheapest thing, is to put the phone down in a school zone. Not on speaker, not in a cradle, down. If you drop off or pick up at any Clark County campus, you are part of the traffic mix that creates the risk. This is the one variable every single driver controls completely.

Slow down and expect students to cross where you do not expect them. Teenagers cross mid-block, in groups, wearing headphones, in low light during winter months. Assume it and drive like it. Come to a full stop at crosswalks and stop behind the line so drivers in the next lane can see the crossing.

If a crossing near your home or your child's school feels unsafe, report it. Traffic engineering requests for signage, markings, lighting, and beacons go through Clark County or your city's public works and traffic departments depending on the road. Documented complaints are what put a location on a priority list. One call rarely changes anything. A pattern of calls from a neighborhood does.

You can also ask your school and the district directly about crossing guard staffing at your campus. School organizational team meetings and CCSD board meetings both include public comment, and staffing questions belong there. If your neighborhood is relying on volunteers, ask why, and ask what it would take to change.

Parents can also change their own drop-off habits. Using a designated drop-off zone instead of the closest curb, arriving a few minutes earlier to avoid the crush, and never waving a student across mid-block all reduce the chaos. A lot of school zone risk is created by people trying to save ninety seconds.

And if you are able, support the parents doing this work. That can mean taking a shift, helping organize a schedule, or simply thanking the person in the vest. They are standing in a road so kids can get across it.

Have questions about how this affects your home or neighborhood? Reach out to Ryan Rose or text/call 702-747-5921 anytime.

Sources

News 3 Las Vegas (KSNV)