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EAST TEXAS — Students in ten East Texas school districts are heading back to class on Monday and their safety is top of mind for every parent. according to our news partner KETK, as the back-to-school rush begins, the Lufkin Police Department is reminding drivers to slow down and lookout for young pedestrians.<\/p>\n
Sgt. Eddie Ibarra, the Lufkin Police Department\u2019s head of traffic told KETK that \u201cyellow means slow down, it doesn\u2019t mean speed up to beat the red light.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to TxDOT, last year there were 781 crashes, 11 of them involving school buses and two people were killed in Texas school zones. <\/p>\n
\u201cLookout for pedestrians, especially since there\u2019s going to be a lot of kids walking to school,\u201d Ibarra said.<\/p>\n
Starting this year, there\u2019s also a new state law requiring students to stay off their phones during school hours.\u00a0After being kept away from their devices all day, officers are now worried students will be more distracted outside by their screens, raising safety concerns for texting while driving or while walking home.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhenever they are getting out of class or leaving school, they are going to be so into their phone they are not paying attention. Just another reason for drivers to pay attention for pedestrians,\u201d Lufkin Police Department Corporal Carter Willmon said.<\/p>\n
TxDOT said parents should teach their students to always stay alert, never assume a driver sees you and do not text in school parking lots.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
EAST TEXAS — Students in ten East Texas school districts are heading back to class on Monday and their safety is top of mind for every parent. according to our news partner KETK, as the back-to-school rush begins, the Lufkin Police Department is reminding drivers to slow down and lookout for young pedestrians. Sgt. Eddie … Continue reading Phones down, drive safe in school zones<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":1431747,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/wp-content\/media\/2025\/08\/school-zone-2-219x200.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[177],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1431287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news-archive-archives"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-06 22:06:57","action":"change-status","newStatus":"trash","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/wp-content\/media\/2025\/08\/school-zone-2-219x200.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1431287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1431287"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1431287\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1432083,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1431287\/revisions\/1432083"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1431747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1431287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1431287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1431287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}