It takes a village to raise a child and when working with our HOA clients, we understand that priority number one is to keep children safe, especially as they head back to school. After a summer off from school, our crews and all your residents need a reminder to watch out for little learners, making their way to the bus stop or neighborhood school yard.
To lower safety risks in your HOA neighborhood, we’ve put together all the safety tips we could gather from our safety policies, plans, and procedures. Not only do we focus on equipment safety for pedestrians and our teams with weekly training updates, but we constantly monitor the landscape itself for potential hazards.
Yellowstone Landscape takes the responsibility of safely beautifying your green spaces seriously. So, we’ve also included best practices from other highly trusted safety organizations in the U.S.
We’ll jump right in because this particular back-to-school year requires more diligence than ever, with more and more school districts in the country struggling with how to keep kids safe on the way to and from campus.
Importance of Roadway Safety for Back-to-School
What’s the most common safety issue facing our schools this year? There are not enough experienced bus drivers to go around, with some areas are experiencing a 30% shortfall!
This can potentially lead to overworked and fatigued drivers who often drive a bus as a second job anyway. Add that to the new student drivers who turned sixteen over summer break, and you can see how traffic hazards are mounting this new school year.
One of the ways our company mitigates these hazards is by working around school bus schedules whenever possible. HOA boards and property managers are happy to communicate the busiest busing times so our account managers can schedule crews to maximize safety.
Your landscaping provider may not be able to avoid servicing your property at certain times of day. Weather and other factors can disrupt maintenance planning. However, landscapers and other service providers should be made aware of bus stops, crossings, and other areas where kids congregate before and after school.
Safety doesn’t end with school buses, though.
Conducting a Safety Audit
Many of our clients have heard about Yellowstone’s Safety Rodeos, so they often ask us for guidance on ways to audit safety aspects of their property.
The first step is to notify stakeholders about a planned safety audit and review any past audits or policies. Next, define key objectives. After that foundation’s in place, conduct your HOA landscape safety audit as follows:
- Perform a site inspection
- Identify and note hazards (examples below)
- Prioritize corrections on any hazards
- Summarize findings in a clear report
- Get consensus on corrections
- Assign duties and begin work
- Track progress
- Follow-up on results compared to the audit
What are the safety hazards that could put neighborhood children in harm’s way?
Broken sidewalks, damaged retaining walls, and limbs hanging perilously may be easy to spot. Yet, things like loose handrails, overgrown shrubs, and obstructed pathways are easy to overlook. Then there are totally hidden dangers like yellowjackets or hornet nests, which could be fatal to children with insect allergies.
Enhancing Visibility and Lighting
Visibility is one of the top keys to safety in every walk of life, and particularly with children. Young children don’t have the height advantage that teenagers and adults do, which limits smaller kids’ line of sight. Plus, they don’t have enough life experience to know what to watch out for. This slows their reaction time.
Knowing this, it’s crucial that drivers in your community have 100% visibility on all streets so they can easily see children who may not see them. Signs should be placed for blind drives at curves and hills. Also, ensure intersection views are not obstructed by untrimmed trees or overgrown shrubs.
Lighting plays a huge role in visibility especially in early morning and late afternoon when most children are commuting. The sun can set as early as 5:20 PM after the Daylight Saving time change.
Many HOA communities have invested in motion-sensor lights to maximize safety and reduce energy consumption. Be sure to schedule simple checks on these lights as well as street lights—the faster an outage is reported, the quicker utility companies can make repairs.
Your landscaping provider should be in charge of keeping trees and bushes from blocking lighting. It only takes a few feet of darkness to hide a small child from an oncoming vehicle.
Maintaining Safe Pathways and Play Areas
A lot can go wrong for children on a seemingly harmless pathway. Safety concerns often overlooked include:
- Slippery mildew and wet leaves
- Overgrown greenery along sidewalks, forcing kids off the safe path into the street
- Poor drainage causes standing water that hides tripping hazards
Luckily, the following nine steps are proven ways to keep pathways safer for children:
- Regular inspections
- Clear signage
- Adequate lighting
- Maintained vegetation
- Proper drainage
- Hardscape maintenance
- Accessibility features
- Snow and ice management
- Encouraging responsible use
What makes each step more effective? An HOA community that’s active and engaged in back-to-school safety.
Play areas deserve attention too. Kids are excited to have free time at neighborhood playgrounds but that’s where most injuries from falls occur. Fractures are a legitimate fear, as are concussions—roughly 1.9 million annually. Inspect safety railings and use soft ground covers to minimize fall hazards.
Other play area safety concerns include head entrapment, sharp points or edges, and strangulation dangers. Don’t forget harmful UV rays and the importance of shade and shelter at playtime.
Safe Plant Choices and Landscaping Techniques
At Yellowstone Landscape, we work with your HOA leadership to choose optimal plants that are sustainable and safe while maximizing visual appeal. Every landscape should be free of toxic plants that could harm children or pets (OSU’s list of safe plants). It’s also best to avoid thorny or high-maintenance plants, especially where children play or wait for the school bus.
How do low-maintenance landscapes protect children?
It reduces service vehicle traffic while helping landscaping providers schedule maintenance when children are not in the area. Fewer hours of equipment use, when children are nearby, can lower risks if you're not sure your service providers receive systematic safety training at the level Yellowstone Landscape requires.
Low-maintenance principles increase safety for DIY homeowners too. Riding lawn mowers are among the most common causes of major limb loss in young U.S. children.
We’ll cover extending the “vigilant village approach” to safety in a moment. First, let’s note other back-to-school concerns for HOA communities:
- Updating irrigation system timing to avoid soaking children near sprinklers
- Ensuring shade and shelter are available at bus stops
- Eye injuries occur due to low-hanging branches - trim them above head height
- Proper fencing around retention ponds can prevent drowning
- Small landscaping rocks are choking hazards for young children, use alternate materials
- Parents need alerts and appropriate signage to keep children off treated turf
- Fire ants remain a threat until cold weather arrives, treat accordingly
Download our full list of Outdoor Safety Concerns for Children.
Community Involvement, Education, and Communication with Your Landscaping Provider
Community involvement will exponentially increase the safety of children as the school year ramps up. Education is crucial too, alongside having a professional landscaping provider focused on excellent communication.
Yellowstone Landscape account managers often sit in on our HOA clients’ monthly meetings. We’d encourage all landscaping providers to go this extra mile to stay in tune with neighborhood concerns.
At the very least, providers should read HOA newsletters to stay informed. Neighborhood knowledge is power and can literally save a child’s life.
Start with community enhancement days to bring HOA residents together for a common cause and brighten up the properties. The bonus from these events? Each participant can note safety hazards as they work. A close-up view helps people spot more issues than they could by just driving by.
The key is to make residents aware that landscape hazards exist—it’s not just traffic that poses threats to children. Educate residents about tripping hazards like exposed sprinkler heads, tree roots, and uneven walkways. Simple handouts can inform residents what poison ivy looks like and provide infographics on just how many children are hurt by falling limbs, bees, and falls.
Conclusion
Back-to-school season is filled with energy, excitement, and increased activity. Each student in your neighborhood has unlimited potential. Potential the world sorely needs as they grow into tomorrow’s leaders. Let’s ensure they’re protected so they get the chance to share their gifts.
Key takeaways to share with your residents are:
- Watch for school buses with potentially inexperienced drivers
- The same goes for inexperienced younger drivers, driving to school
- Young children don’t have adult advantages of visibility and life experience
- Landscape safety audits can eliminate most hazards
- Visibility increases safety, and good lighting enhances visibility
- Falls are common childhood injuries, so regularly inspect pathways and play areas
- Consistent, thorough landscape maintenance naturally reduces landscape dangers to kids
Finally, you can never over-communicate when it comes to back-to-school safety. Homeowners are perhaps busy, out of town, dealing with medical problems, etc. Any number of factors can cause them to miss HOA meetings or overlook flyers and newsletters about safety concerns. That means it’s critical to post notices via letters, signage, social media, emails, text alerts, and any other channels available to increase awareness.
As for your landscaping provider, they play a huge role too. Be sure they’re on the same page and well above par on safety practices.
Yellowstone Landscape does safety audits for our HOA clients. Contact us to ensure your landscape is hazard-free, healthy, and provides beautiful outdoor spaces for everyone in your neighborhood.
