AAA Honors AA County Student With Outstanding School Safety Award

CROFTON, MD (June 20, 2023) - AAA recently recognized 2022-2023 AAA Outstanding School Safety Patroller winner, Samantha Benjamin. Samantha is a fifth grader at Crofton Meadows Elementary School in Crofton, MD. She was nominated for this honor by her safety advisor for her exemplary leadership. Like thousands of her peers across the county, Samantha has remained committed to keeping her fellow students safe and being a positive role model at her school.

Samantha Benjamin is described by her advisor, Ms. Shannon Rose, as a leader who is dedicated to her academics, responsibility to her class and is always willing to assist others. Examples of Samantha’s leadership include: leading her safety patrol peers to ensure they were being responsible on their posts; reconfiguring some of the safety patrol posts to enhance overall safety procedures; and, coming to the aid of a student, who was ill as a result of low-blood sugar levels.

“Samantha is not only the Captain of Safety Patrol, she is also a news anchor, reporting the morning announcements to all students at our school,” said Ms. Shannon Rose, AAA School Safety Patrol Advisor. “She arrives before all students to make sure all 42 safety patrollers are at their posts, and then quickly transitions to morning news, where she shares the positivity of what is happening within our school.”

For more than 100 years, the AAA School Safety Patrol has been the world’s largest school-based safety program. Patrollers around the world provide school-aged children an extra sense of safety and security during the school day’s busiest times: arrival and dismissal. As a peer-to-peer leadership development program, Safety Patrols are trained to recognize safety hazards to ensure a safer school environment. The presence of a AAA School Safety Patroller wearing the familiar belt and badge is a nationally recognized symbol representing more than 679,000 children throughout the country who participate in the program each year.

“It’s the dedication and leadership of students like Samantha and countless others that have made the AAA School Safety Patrol program so impactful for decades, “ said Ragina Cooper Ali, Public and Government Affairs Manager at AAA Mid-Atlantic.

Created to make schoolchildren safer while walking to school, the program has grown-up and matured with the times while remaining steadfast to its mission to provide a safer environment and leadership opportunities for millions of schoolchildren. The training that patrollers receive instills safety sense beyond street crossings, including bus and car drop-offs, monitoring hallway congestion, and teaching patrollers invaluable leadership skills.

“AAA is proud to support this critical safety program in Maryland and at schools across the country,” Ali added. “We provide these young people with training tools to help make their school safer. We are impressed with their leadership and initiative in implementing safety changes and improvements at their schools."

The leadership values and safety awareness have inspired many former patrollers to pursue admirable careers, including Presidents of the United States, astronauts, governors, Members of Congress, Supreme Court justices, Olympic medalists, and authors, like Diary of a Wimpy Kid author, Jeff Kinney. Many patrollers now serve as educators, executives, and community leaders.

Since 1920, AAA has been providing various equipment and education materials to patrollers, including reflective belts, patrol badges and training resources. The AAA model has been adopted in at least 30 other countries, including England, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and New Zealand.