Farmingdale High School community reflects on year since upstate bus crash

A year after the 2023 bus crash that killed two beloved Farmingdale High School educators and injured dozens of students, the school community is quietly marking the tragic anniversary.

Band members and their faculty leaders held a short ceremony earlier this month at the Greeley, Pennsylvania, camp that was their intended destination last year, a rural retreat they have visited for years to hone their routines before a busy performance season.

The anniversary was also scheduled to be observed during Friday announcements at the high school. The only formal ceremony will take place Oct. 8, when Oyster Bay Town officials are scheduled to join the band and members of the community to rename two area streets in honor of the educators killed in the crash, chaperone and former teacher Beatrice Ferrari and band leader Gina Pellettiere. The streets to be renamed are Woodward Parkway at 11th Avenue in honor of Ferrari, and 10th Avenue at Woodward Parkway in honor of Pellettiere.

"These were talented, dedicated educators, teachers that everyone in the district loves and talks about," said Oyster Bay Supervisor Joe Saladino.

The event will be "a celebration of life," Farmingdale Superintendent Paul Defendini said, with stories from people who knew Ferrari and Pellettiere well, speeches celebrating their work and a performance by the band. Attendees are encouraged to wear "Daler" gear, as many community members did in the weeks following the crash.

Defendini said the district was following a delicate strategy, grown from conversations between educators, counselors and students, to respectfully memorialize a calamity without retraumatizing those who experienced its horrors.

"People handle this in unique ways," he said. "It’s different for kids, it’s different for adults. We did not want to be forcefully putting this in front of people to revisit."

These were talented, dedicated educators, teachers that everyone in the district loves and talks about.

— Joe Saladino, Oyster Bay supervisor

A six-bus convoy carrying roughly 300 Farmingdale students and adults left Long Island on Sept. 21, 2023. At about 1:12 p.m. on Interstate 84 near Wawayanda in upstate Orange County, the first bus, carrying 40 students and four adults and operated by Nesconset-based Regency Transportation, crossed the left lane of traffic. It hit a roadside cable barrier and tumbled down the highway’s sunken median. Several occupants, including the bus driver, Ferrari and Pellettiere, were ejected from the bus. The driver was badly injured. Ferrari and Pellettiere were killed. 

That account is taken primarily from the preliminary investigation report of the National Transportation Safety Board. The report does not give the cause of the crash or the speed of the bus. A state police accident report says the "front left tire became disabled," causing the vehicle to "veer left across the left lane," traveling down the median and hitting several trees before it came to rest on its left side.

"It looks like a mechanical [issue]," state police spokesman Trooper Steven Nevel said. Nevel said he could not say if charges would be filed in connection with the crash. State police have not yet released the bus, he said in an interview this month.

The NTSB has not issued its final report on the crash, though a spokesman for the agency said some investigation documents would be uploaded to the NTSB website on or around the one-year anniversary.

Regency is closing, but its operators have told the state Department of Transportation that they "are in the process of transferring control of their fleet to a newly-registered entity called Tri State Coaches LLC. at the same address and with the same ownership," agency spokesman Joe Morrissey said in an email. "The buses under Tri State Coaches LLC. will continue to be regularly inspected under the department’s bus inspection program.”

A January 2024 claim in New York State Court of Claims by Regency against New York State includes a sworn deposition by Al Caliano, identifying himself as Regency's president. A March 2024 DOT Bulletin of Motor Carrier Applications includes a Tri State Coaches application to provide chartered or special party service names Alfred Caliano as one of two company members. 

A man who answered a phone number listed in state DOT records for Regency on Thursday declined to identify himself but said Regency had gone out of business and that his company, sometimes also known as Tri State, had taken over Regency's Nesconset offices. When a Newsday reporter called back Friday to ask about the DOT spokesman's statement, a woman who answered the phone said no one was available to talk. 

Records of the federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration say that Regency "has a pending insurance cancellation." The state DOT in 2023 included Regency on a list of "unacceptable" companies. Federal inspectors, however, listed the company’s safety record as "satisfactory" with better-than-average performance compared with national averages.

Authorities have identified the bus driver as Lisa Schaffer. A woman who answered the door at Schaffer's house Thursday identified herself as Schaffer's daughter but declined to comment. 

Roughly 30 lawsuits have been filed in connection with the crash, most by parents of band members against Regency or the school district, seeking damages for injuries and emotional distress. Schaffer and tiremaker Bridgestone Americas also appear as defendants in some suits. None of the suits appear to have been resolved. Lawyers for the district and Regency and its driver declined to comment on pending litigation, and a lawyer for Bridgestone did not respond to a request for comment. They have typically argued in filings that the suits should be dismissed. 

Ferrari, 77, of Farmingdale, taught history at Farmingdale schools for more than 30 years and was retired but serving as a band chaperone at the time of the crash. Some called her the "grandmother" of the band. Pellettiere, 43, of Massapequa, taught music for close to two decades. Known as "Ms. P" to her students, she grew up in Hicksville and played some 20 instruments. She left behind a 2-year-old son, Joseph.

Hundreds of people attended funeral masses held for the women at local churches.

When the community gathers in October, "I’m sure there’s going to be tear-shedding, because it’s rekindling memories of that tragic day," said Sandra Talavera, who plans to attend. Her son, Santino, played trumpet in the band and has gone on to play at Nassau County Community College. Talavera said her family regularly prays for Pellettiere and Ferrari, and still displays a Daler Strong sign in the yard.

The year since the crash has been hard, said Matthew DeMasi, who assumed Pellettiere’s role as wind ensemble director and leads the marching band along with David Abrams.

DeMasi saw the crash from the window of another bus, then ran down the ravine to do what he could. His memories of what he saw when he got there are still vivid. So are his memories of the months that followed.

"I would see children every day that were in that accident," he said. "My heart was breaking. I would see their scars and I would remember, and I would feel for them that they had to carry around these scars."

After the crash, the band stopped playing for a week. It was the students' choice to resume. In the months that followed, DeMasi and Abrams kept most of the big performances on the calendar.

"We said, ‘What do we need to do to let this program continue,’" DeMasi recalled. "We always walked this tightrope of not talking about [the crash] because it upsets some kids and talking about it because some kids needed to ... I’m not going to shy away from it, but it’s not on our daily agenda to make this part of our class. Our class is to come together to make music and we’re going to accomplish that goal, while not ignoring the emotional component."

DeMasi said one mother told him that her child felt he and other educators weren’t doing enough to acknowledge the trauma of what had occurred. "There was a lot of numbness," he said. "Maybe that’s where kids got that, the thought that [band teachers] didn’t seem to be affected, or they don’t care. I cared deeply. There was a lot of trauma between losing a friend and a colleague and a mentor" in Pellettiere, who was only a few years older than DeMasi but had more experience teaching at the high school level.

In the months after the crash, when some band members were still hospitalized, band camp was not a priority. But camp has, for years, been an important part of the Farmingdale band program, which is one of Long Island's largest and most decorated. Attendees have described it as something like boot camp with ice cream parties: musicians, kickline dancers and coaches hone their routines over 6-8 hour days in a remote setting about 3½ hours from Farmingdale, then gather at night for karaoke and volleyball.

"We bill this weekend as one of the biggest memories of their high school career," DeMasi said. "One of my thoughts was that we were never going to go back." He worried, he said, that the disaster "would be the final memory of this place for a lot of those kids."

We have made so much progress since then. We have grown as a community, as a band and as a family.

— Alessandro Chavarria Fuentes, 17, a senior drum major at Farmingdale High School

Those fears were not borne out. Band members "said to us very clearly" that they wanted to continue the years-old band tradition at Pine Forest Camp, Defendini said. Band members who attended were given the choice of riding a school charter bus or riding with parents, Defendini said. The district did not use Regency, he said.

"The day of the crash feels like just yesterday to a lot of us," said Alessandro Chavarria Fuentes, 17, a senior drum major who conducts the band during performances. But, he said, "We have made so much progress since then. We have grown as a community, as a band and as a family."

Fuentes said he had good memories of Ferrari driving her golf cart around camp. "She was the happiest person around," he said. He also remembers watching Pellettiere conduct: "At every concert we had, she had such a fire in her. No one I had ever seen had that." Those memories have shaped Fuentes. He intends to pursue a major in music education at college next year, he said. 

DeMasi said the camp memorial ceremony had been simple. The grown-ups told some funny stories about the women they had lost. Ferrari's grandson, Luke Aldieri, a senior drum major, placed a plaque at a sturdy pine. 

"In Memory of our beloved marching band director and music teacher, Gina Pellettiere, and our band camp chaperone, Bea Ferrari," it says. "May their memory live on in our hearts and on the field. Love, your Daler Marching Band family."