Stop, Look, Listen

Today we suffered a trauma as a school that happens at some point almost every year. Because of the location of the school next to a busy 6-lane road, traffic in and out of the school and student pedestrian traffic crossing the street at various times of the day, accidents are a significant issue. There are the inevitable bumps and scrapes of parking lot accidents, or accidents entering or leaving school, but most of those are minor and involve vehicles.

Yet, often students will cross the road at inappropriate places, or impatiently try to dodge traffic. For their part, auto traffic on the road tends to be far above the speed limit, leading to shorter reaction times, no matter how good the driver and how appropriate the student crossing. We certainly aren't the only school or only country with traffic, accident, injury, and fatality problems with students. It's a modern problem of older buildings combined with increasing population, increasing traffic, and expanding roadways near schools.

With students old enough to drive, accidents account for large percentage of injuries and fatalities. Add in violent deaths and suicide and those explain most of teen fatalities. It certainly isn't a popular or easy subject to discuss or deal with. It does have to be a subject to discuss and deal with. These are preventable injuries and deaths, and it certainly justifies energy and creativity to solve those problems. We, as a country, lag behind most of the other industrialized countries in terms of protecting our children from these all-too-common dangers.

Physically protecting our students at, and around school, needs to be a priority. This is certainly a goal worthy of 100% success. Yet, with an abundance of data, information, and support in this area, rarely is it the topic of our public conversation, debate, or even interest. [A good list of some of the causes of "failures" in providing safety can be found here.] We are so absorbed now with "success", by those driving a certain agenda, defined by testing, that we rarely have space in any of our discourse about many important issues involving education and "the good life."

Luckily, it looks like I will have both of my students back in class. Although, at the present time, one student victim is at risk. It easily could have been otherwise.