On the fourth day of school, during Veronica “Ronnie” Najjar’s fourth year as principal of P.S. 89 in Battery Park City, she was chatting with parents in the schoolyard.
“We heard, all of us, a group of us, heard an incredibly loud sound that was not going away,” Najjar recalled. “It was becoming louder and louder.”
It was Sept. 11, 2001.
“I have a clear view of the north tower from our school yard,” she said. “And, we saw the plane go through the top of the north tower. Horrifying.”
The children were already inside the school. It wasn’t long before she moved all of them to the center of the building, in a windowless auditorium.
She didn’t have a television in the school, and was getting updates from parents and the school district office.
The first video of eyewitnesses to the attacks shown on NY1 that day was an interview with parents who had picked their children up from P.S. 89.
“We went running, and we saw the first one. The school, P.S. 89, is right there. So all the parents that were there went in there, and the principal was calling,” one parent says in archival footage from that day.
“We had a moment where the lights flickered on and off a few times,” Najjar said. “And that was the moment that the south tower had collapsed. I got on the phone again with the district office, and I said, we really have to get out of here.”
It was decided she would evacuate the students to P.S. 3 in Greenwich Village, about a mile and a half away. Najjar, her staff and parents who had gathered at the school walked the children up the West Side Highway.
“I was holding a boy’s hand. He was probably 7, maybe he was 8, named Sam. And he turned to me and said, ‘So Ronnie, do you think the firemen have a ladder that’s high enough to go help those people up there?’” Najjar said. “And I said to him, ‘You know what, Sam? They’re going to do the best they can to help everybody.’”
Not long after, they heard a sound unlike anything Najjar has ever heard again.
“It was the rumbling of the — of the building imploding,” she said. “And we all stood there and looked at this building just go down like a pancake, exactly as they say it did. And it was a quick look. And then we just all started to, to walk again.”
It was an endless day, tracking down parents and accounting for children. And it was a long school year. Some students didn’t return right away, staying at second homes or with family outside the city.
Others came back. NY1 spoke with P.S. 89 parents when their children returned to school after the attacks, remaining temporarily at P.S. 3.
“I was in New Jersey when the attack hit, and managed to, through the kindness of a ferry captain, to get back to her, to get to her. But we had no idea where she’d been evacuated to,” a parent says in archival footage.
“Are you having trouble letting go of her today?” a reporter asks.
“Yeah, I am,” the parent responds. “I think I’m having a worse time than she is.”
“There was a lot of, I would say, strong disagreement among the families about when it will be safe to come back to New York City — or back to our school, actually,” Najjar said. “And a lot of meetings at night with air quality people, environmentalists, people who were looking at the HVAC systems.”
They returned to P.S. 89 in March — and, despite the disagreements, made it a community again.
“We really poured a lot of support into our kids and our staff and our parents,” Najjar said.
That day, and that year, influenced her long tenure as principal. Now, she’s retiring.
It’s hard to say goodbye, but she says she’s ready.
“I’ve spent my entire life as an educator making decisions,” Najjar said. “Decision after decision after decision. Small ones and really big ones. And I’m just looking forward to not having that, for a while.”