Nassau BOCES to honor Gina Pellettiere, Farmingdale band director killed in crash

Nassau BOCES will honor Gina Pellettiere, the Farmingdale High School band director killed last fall in the upstate New York crash of a bus carrying her and her musicians to a weekend band camp.

The education agency is scheduled at a May 7 gala to give its Education Partner Award to Pellettiere, posthumously, and 13 other honorees.

"Her impact on her students, colleagues and community is apparent in the outpouring of love and support surrounding her tragic death," said Nassau BOCES deputy superintendent and chief operating officer James Widmer in an emailed statement.

The awards honor those who make a “substantial impact on public education in Nassau County” and share the board's “commitment to enabling students of all ages and abilities to achieve their maximum potential,” the organization said in a news release this week.

The Farmingdale School District did not comment Thursday.

Other BOCES honorees this year include a police officer, school administrators from several Nassau districts, students and BOCES employees. Pellettiere is the only non-BOCES teacher receiving an award.

Pellettiere and her musicians were bound for the band’s traditional preseason practice camp — a rigorous, dayslong bonding experience in remote Greeley, Pennsylvania — when their rented charter bus crashed on I-84 in Wawayanda, in upstate Orange County, on Sept. 21 of last year.

According to a preliminary report by the National Transportation Safety Board, the bus “penetrated a cable barrier” and tumbled down an embankment. Three adults — marching band director Pellettiere, 43, longtime chaperone Beatrice Ferrari, 77, and the bus driver — were ejected. Pellettiere and Ferrari died.

NTSB final reports are typically released 1 to 2 years after the crash. 

The May gala will be hosted by the Nassau BOCES Educational Foundation, which BOCES described in its release as a community-based organization that supports educational opportunities for students that are beyond the scope of the agency’s budget.

Using money raised in part at the annual galas, the foundation has awarded $644,000 in grants for that work over the last 17 years.

Nassau BOCES serves nearly 200,000 students in more than 55 school districts with cost-sharing and learning programs.