NYC kids exposed to terror
November 6th, 2017“……Hudson River Middle is a small progressive public school on Warren Street at the corner of West Street, one short block south of where Sayfullo Saipov crashed his rental truck into a school bus on Halloween, after plowing the truck down a crowded bike path along the river, killing eight people and injuring a dozen, including two students on the bus. The building also houses a second school — P.S. 89, the Liberty School — which serves children from prekindergarten through fifth grade, who were being let out on Tuesday afternoon while the attack was unfolding. Children and parents and caregivers already outside, in an enclosed yard, were brought in and sequestered for safety in a windowless cafeteria where teachers foraged for snacks. The middle-school students were sent to a gym on the third floor.
Although the school year is relatively new, the younger children had already participated in lockdown drills. They were told that this one was real, that they were being kept safe inside from something unsafe happening outside. In morning meeting the following day, Connie Ryan, a prekindergarten teacher told her students what a great job the police had done in protecting everyone. During play, she said, a lot of children sent Lego Duplo people to jail.
One block north, across the street at Stuyvesant High School, there are two phases of dismissal, one at 2:45 and another at 3:30. Some students who left in the first round on Tuesday were crossing a popular footbridge connecting the campus to TriBeCa when the chaos erupted, giving them a full view of the carnage. When it was clear to administrators that something terrible was happening, an announcement was made over the loud speaker that the school was implementing a “shelter in,” a modified lockdown that forbids students from leaving the school but allows them to move within the building……”