Back To School Lists

The Back-to-School List Nobody Sends Home

The back-to-school lists are starting to come home as we prep for yet another school year. Two notebooks, some folders, and the one specific brand of pen or pencil. A few other miscellaneous things and you may think you're good to go.

But there's another list I keep every August, and the school doesn't send this one home. I put it together because of the job I do. It's short, none of it is scary, and not one item is on the paper the teacher hands out. Four things.

1. An emergency contact card in every backpack

Not the fridge magnet. Not a name buried in the school's online system somewhere. A laminated card in the front pocket of your kiddos backpack, so that if anyone ever needs it, the information is in the hand of the person standing over your child in the moment.

Mine has their full name and date of birth, my number, a second number that isn't me, allergies and any medications, and the two people I've already told the school can pick them up if I can't get there. It takes ten minutes to make and it rides in the backpack all year.

2. An updated pickup authorization at the school

Most of us fill this out once, at the start of the very first year, and never look at it again. Then a grandparent moves down from out of state, a babysitter changes, a custody arrangement shifts, and nobody goes back to update the form. The morning it matters isn't the morning you want to be arguing with the front office about who's allowed to walk out with your kid. Five minutes in August fixes it.

3. A fifteen-minute coverage check before the pickup line starts

School-year traffic is a different animal. More cars in tight places at the same two times of day, more distracted parents on phones, more kids at knee height between bumpers. And most of the drivers around you at 3 p.m. are carrying the coverage they picked out of a drop-down menu five years ago and haven't opened since.

You don't need to become an insurance expert. You need fifteen minutes with your own declarations page to check one thing in particular: your uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage, the part of your policy that protects your family when the driver who hits you has little or nothing. It's the line most families skip, and it's the one that decides how a school-year crash actually goes.

4. The coverage conversation with your teen driver

If you're at that stage, have the real version of this talk, not the "be careful" version. The actual conversation is about what your policy does when your teen crashes, what it doesn't do, and what you'd each want the other to do in the first ten minutes. In Florida, if the car's in your name, you're on the hook for what happens in it. So putting your teen on the policy and actually protecting your family for the day they crash aren't the same thing. Both are easier to sort out at the kitchen table in August than in an emergency-room hallway in October.

None of it is on the supply list

That's the whole point. Half of what your family would actually need in a hard moment isn't on any paper the school sends home. It's on this one. None of it takes long, and you can knock most of it out in a single afternoon before the first bell.

If you get stuck on the coverage piece, that's the part I'm genuinely happy to help with. Send me a picture of your declarations page and I'll tell you where your gaps are, or grab a free Auto Policy Review. Either way, that first conversation is always free. You can reach me at (561) 940-0100.