Here's Valley Stream North High School's show of solidarity after the Farmingdale fatal bus crash

Roughly 40 Farmingdale High School band students were loaded onto a bus destined to take them to a band camp in Pennsylvania last month. One moment, the students were riding along Interstate 84, roughly 70 miles northwest of New York City. The next, their lives changed forever.

The bus veered off the road, plowed into a wired guard rail, and tumbled 50 feet into a ravine, killing two teachers and sending dozens of traumatized students to the hospital. Some were left in critical condition. 

When Valley Stream North High School music teachers Angelica Ansbacher and Rebecca Hayden first learned of what Gov. Kathy Hochul called “a day of terror” for the state, the same thought struck them both. “This could have been our school, our students, our bus, and our trip,” Hayden said.   

“We take field trips all the time,” Ansbacher said. “What if it were my band? What if it were me?”

Like many teachers on Long Island sorting through the emotionally shocking loss that transpired that day, she could see herself in 43-year-old Gina Pellettiere, the admired director of bands at the high school who perished that day.    

“Upon hearing of Gina’s passing, shock turned into immense sadness,” said Ansbacher. “As a female high school band director, I related to Gina greatly and knew the kind of impact she had on her students.

“She was their rock and the heartbeat of their high school band experience.”

That band experience, which is normally looked back on with cozy fondness as a defining highlight of their high school life, has been ultimately spoiled for Farmingdale High School students. And in turn, it has upended the peace of mind of the music community in Valley Stream, Hayden said.

“Our high school music students felt the enormity of this as well, the majority of whom have gone on a music trip either for a competition or a performance,” she said. “Unfortunately, they could too easily imagine themselves in a similar situation.”

That’s when they had an idea.

That following Tuesday, Ansbacher and Hayden met with students from North’s Tri M Music Honor Society and the school’s select ensembles: the Swingin’ Spartans Jazz Ensemble and Breakfast Club Ensemble. The two of them would “fill the students in on a fundraiser idea to make a meaningful and lasting difference to the Farmingdale Music Department.”

They would sell music notes, $1 each, to help shore up a scholarship fund in memory of Pellettiere. The students were more than eager to get on board. Within less than two weeks, students and staff were able to rake in $700.

“I created a spreadsheet on which students would sign up to sell the notes and we trained students on how to handle money, keep a log, and distribute the music notes,” said Ansbacher. The notes, sold during lunch periods and after school, were inscribed with messages of prayer, encouragement, and sympathy, and to be hung on display in the school’s cafeteria.

Ansbacher and Hayden said it was important to offer students a way to channel their feelings of sadness through a meaningful show of solidarity.

In the “meaningful” discussions with students about “the lasting impact of this tragedy” and in the concerted efforts shown to help Farmingdale High School, noted Hayden and Ansbacher, students and staff have grown more connected.

“It’s helped us realize just how fortunate we are to have a wonderful student-musician community,” said Hayden and Ansbacher. And it’s put into a larger perspective the responsibility of teachers “to help our scholars understand what it means to be empathetic and supportive of others,” they said.

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