On the fourth day of school, during Veronica “Ronnie” Najjar\u2019s fourth year as principal of P.S. 89 in Battery Park City, she was chatting with parents in the schoolyard.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe heard, all of us, a group of us, heard an incredibly loud sound that was not going away,\u201d Najjar recalled. \u201cIt was becoming louder and louder.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was Sept. 11, 2001.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI have a clear view of the north tower from our school yard,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd, we saw the plane go through the top of the north tower. Horrifying.\u201d<\/p>\n
The children were already inside the school. It wasn\u2019t long before she moved all of them to the center of the building, in a windowless auditorium.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She didn’t have a television in the school, and was getting updates from parents and the school district office.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
“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,\u201d one parent says in archival footage from that day.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had a moment where the lights flickered on and off a few times,\u201d Najjar said. \u201cAnd 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI was holding a boy’s hand. He was probably 7, maybe he was 8, named Sam. And he turned to me and said, \u2018So Ronnie, do you think the firemen have a ladder that’s high enough to go help those people up there?\u2019\u201d Najjar said. \u201cAnd I said to him, \u2018You know what, Sam? They’re going to do the best they can to help everybody.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Not long after, they heard a sound unlike anything Najjar has ever heard again.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was the rumbling of the \u2014 of the building imploding,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was an endless day, tracking down parents and accounting for children. And it was a long school year. Some students didn\u2019t return right away, staying at second homes or with family outside the city.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
“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,\u201d a parent says in archival footage.<\/p>\n
“Are you having trouble letting go of her today?” a reporter asks.<\/p>\n
“Yeah, I am,\u201d the parent responds. \u201cI think I’m having a worse time than she is.”<\/p>\n
\u201cThere 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 \u2014 or back to our school, actually,\u201d Najjar said. \u201cAnd a lot of meetings at night with air quality people, environmentalists, people who were looking at the HVAC systems.\u201d<\/p>\n
They returned to P.S. 89 in March \u2014 and, despite the disagreements, made it a community again.<\/p>\n
“We really poured a lot of support into our kids and our staff and our parents,\u201d Najjar said.<\/p>\n
That day, and that year, influenced her long tenure as principal. Now, she\u2019s retiring.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It\u2019s hard to say goodbye, but she says she\u2019s ready.<\/p>\n
\u201cI’ve spent my entire life as an educator making decisions,\u201d Najjar said. \u201cDecision after decision after decision. Small ones and really big ones. And I\u2019m just looking forward to not having that, for a while.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On the fourth day of school, during Veronica “Ronnie” Najjar\u2019s fourth year as principal of P.S. 89 in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":334053,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[203,25,67,5215,75,84,83,9,24,12,63,27,200],"class_list":["post-334052","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-app-education","tag-app-top-stories","tag-education","tag-jillian-jorgensen","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-news","tag-nyc","tag-top-stories","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334052","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=334052"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334052\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/334053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=334052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=334052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=334052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}