Police and East Williston School District officials this week defended their handling of an accident on Nov. 21 in which five North Side School students received minor injuries when a bus that was carrying 43 students collided with a car near the intersection of Roslyn Road and Summit Road.
Kevin Canavan, chief inspector of the Nassau County Police 3rd Precinct, said a police ambulance and ambulances from the Westbury, Carle Place, Williston Park and East Williston fire departments followed standard protocol in transporting children to the Nassau University Medical Center for mandatory medical examinations in the absence of a parent or guardian.
“If there’s no responsible adult to say, ‘That is my child,’ we transport them to the hospital for evaluation. It’s always better safe than sorry,” Canavan said. “That’s the way we always operate. That’s our standard procedure.”
East Williston School District’s director of transportation Chris Malone was summoned to the scene as well – also part of standard procedure, according to East Williston Superintendent of Schools Lorna Lewis, who said she also went to the scene shortly after being informed of it. Lewis said she immediately called for another bus to transport the kids safely to school
“At the time of the accident, we knew we needed to get another bus there in case the kids needed to be transported safely to school,” she said.
Lewis said she was informed that since the students were grade schoolers, police protocol required that they be sent to a hospital for evaluation.
“We may not like it, but that is the protocol,” she said.
Victoria Hagemann, who said she has a son attending the North Side School, said some parents weren’t alerted to news about the incident until 11 a.m. and complained that school officials should have been better prepared.
“How the superintendent isn’t aware of this law is shocking,” Hagemann said in a letter to the Williston Times about the requirement that grade schools be sent to a hospital for evaluation after an accident if a parent isn’t available.
Hagemann also said she does not think school officials have done enough in the wake of the accident.
“Considering this accident involved young students, it would be reasonable that some type of crisis intervention would’ve been given to all the children in the school,” she wrote in her letter.
“Not once did a social worker or a school psychologist address the children,” Hagemann said during a phone interview. “There was talk of a kid coming to school in a neck brace. Communication was poor.”
Lewis said notification of parents depended on being able to reach them by the emergency numbers they had filed with the North Side School, and the difficulty in determining which students were on the bus.
Lewis said none of the students had sustained injuries, but she complied with police procedure and preceded the ambulance to the hospital, alerting hospital personnel to anticipate their arrival, and remained at the hospital to observe the treatment they received there.
“I remained at the hospital to see that the children were treated at the hospital,” Lewis said.
She praised the response of the medical personnel at the hospital as “exceptional.”
In the meantime, the district decided to alert the parents of the children on the bus by phone about the incident.
“We felt that parents needed to hear a voice at the other end of the line,” Lewis said.
At the time of the accident, some parents got word of it immediately and arrived to take their children home for the day or to school, according to North Side principal James Bloomgarden, who said some parents arrived to claim their children and were permitted to leave the scene with them after emergency medical responders examined the students at the scene.
“We made sure that everyone was well taken care of,” said Bloomgarden, who accompanied Lewis to the hospital.
North Side assistant principal Steve Foster, who went to the accident scene with Bloomgarden, subsequently rode on the second school bus that Lewis had summoned to transport all of the students remaining on the bus – 20 students, according to Bloomgarden – for examination at the hospital.
Bloomgarden said his concern about rumors circulating about students injured in the accident, along with an exaggeration of the number of students involved, prompted him to send a letter about the incident home with each student that day. The North Side School also transmitted an automated phone message late in the day to inform all parents about the traffic mishap.
“I wanted that letter to go home that day to quell any possible rumors that were out there,” Bloomgarden said.
He said he fielded a complaint from one parent about how the situation was handled and said that many parents expressed their appreciation for what was done.
Lewis praised the way the students involved handled the situation and was relieved that none of the children on the bus sustained any serious injuries.
“We are extremely thankful that there were no major injuries and our children were spectacular in their behavior,” Lewis said.
Reach reporter Richard Tedesco by e-mail at rtedesco@theislandnow.com or by phone at 516.307.1045 x204
