Editorial: As start dates edge ever earlier, don't overlook back-to-school safety

If you're like us, you're only now getting used to the idea that the community swimming pools have opened. How, one wonders, can it be the middle of August already?

For all those chlorine-drenched kids, a similar question may be forming, albeit with a different twist. How, they may be asking, can it be time to start school already?

The kids, at least, have an excuse.

For many, if not most of them, summer vacation is coming to an end significantly earlier than they may be accustomed to. As our staff writer Eric Peterson reported Monday, mid-August and earlier school starts in the suburbs follow a statewide trend, as high schools adjust for earlier winter vacations and adapt to important September testing dates. As high schools move earlier, the junior highs and elementaries that feed them naturally find themselves altering their calendars.

By next Monday, Illinois State Board of Education statistics show, more than 95 percent of school districts in the state will be open for business. Scores of suburban districts are among those already open or opening this week.

This all can have serious repercussions beyond the academic, certainly beyond predictable student grumbling about shortened summers or homework in August. It can have a practical impact on the physical safety of children and teenagers as well. That's something for the schools, the kids, their parents and all of us to keep in mind.

While many of us are still getting used to the idea that summer is hurtling toward its end, kids are returning to the roads on foot, on bicycles, in buses and, for many high school students, in personal cars. Failing to be aware of them can have tragic consequences.

Even in the days when a school start near or after Labor Day was traditional, teen crashes and accidents involving younger students spiked in September as everyone became reacquainted with new patterns of behavior, according to the National Safety Council. As the start days move even earlier, it's only natural that many people aren't even realizing it's actually time to begin the fall reacquaintance cycle.

Time for drivers to watch out for children in crosswalks on busy streets.

Time to be aware of school-bus patterns and of the need to stop when children are loading and unloading.

Time for parents to be talking with children about safety not only on streets and sidewalks, but on the playground as well. The NSC offers a comprehensive list of dangers it's time we all start watching out for, emphasizing in particular the tragic consequences when drivers fail to obey the extended STOP arm on a stopped school bus.

So, back-to-school safety is an important topic for all of us, whatever our relationship to schools. Let's not let it sneak up on us.