To Our Farmingdale Family,

Please allow this letter to serve as a more complete explanation regarding an incident that occurred yesterday morning. For those who may not be aware, Section 8 provided us with a coach bus to transport our cheerleading team to a competition in Binghamton, NY. Unfortunately, the bus departed from Farmingdale High School without undergoing a complete inspection. We conducted the necessary background check on the bus driver and the 19-a certification, which certifies bus drivers to transport children. However, we did not conduct our own inspection of the bus. Our coaching staff discovered that the bus lacked seatbelts shortly after leaving. Upon discovering this deficiency, we directed the bus to pull over and remain stationary until a fully inspected replacement bus arrived to safely transport our girls for the remainder of their trip.

We understand that the confusion surrounding Friday’s coach bus trip to Binghamton has caused frustration and concern, and we want to provide clarity and a deeper understanding of what has transpired in the last 24 hours. Since the tragic accident that our community suffered in 2023, we have committed ourselves to the highest safety standards. We fell short of our standards on Friday, and we take full responsibility.

Although this trip was contracted by Section 8 rather than the school district, our protocol requires a safety inspection of every bus transporting our students. Unfortunately, that inspection did not occur as intended before the bus left our high school.

In response to this incident, our team met to review this situation and reinforce our existing safety procedures. We shall implement the following additional safeguards to ensure that this does not happen again:

• Redundant verification: We have established a "secondary-check" system in which a bus cannot depart district grounds until a second staff member verifies that it complies with all contracted safety specifications.

• Contractual alignment: We have formally communicated with Section 8, in very direct terms, that the Farmingdale School District mandates that all their future transportation contracts for state championship events must align with our district’s strict safety and seatbelt requirements.

• Internal accountability: We are taking appropriate administrative actions with the staff members involved in yesterday’s incident to enforce accountability and ensure that our established protocols are followed without exception.

In Farmingdale, we care for one another with an uncommon devotion, a devotion that has grown stronger in recent years. It is the reason many of us choose to live here. We pride ourselves on working tirelessly for each other, yet we must honestly acknowledge that yesterday’s lapse in protocol fell short of the high standards our families have come to expect from our schools. We are deeply relieved that the safety concern was identified in time for our staff to act. We also accept that there is no excuse for this oversight, and we hold ourselves accountable. Our focus now is on learning and evolving, ensuring that our actions speak louder than our words.

We are committed to doing better as a community that protects its own. That is our promise to every member of our Farmingdale family, now and always.

Yours Truly, Paul Defendini