Two boys arrested in West Hempstead school arson

Two 14-year-old boys have been charged with arson in the fire that ravaged an annex of the George Washington Elementary School in West Hempstead, Nassau police said Tuesday night.

The pair, from West Hempstead, are being charged with fourth-degree arson, police said. The boys were not trying to burn down the school, police said, while offering few details of the arrests.

Despite the blaze, school officials said Tuesday that the school can open in September and house all students without increasing class sizes.

"We are confident we can accommodate all students scheduled to attend the school," read a statement the school district posted on its website.

The building was unoccupied and no one was injured in the blaze, which occurred at 8:35 p.m. Monday, police said. The fire, at the rear of the main complex, badly damaged a temporary building connected to the school. School district Superintendent John Hogan suffered a heart attack at the scene and was taken to Winthrop-University Hospital in Mineola for treatment, said PTA co-president Teresa Levey.

Among those who went to the school Tuesday morning to examine the aftermath were two sisters who had attended school in the annex and had the same first grade teacher, Virginia Croker. While there with Levey, their mother, they discovered some colorful ink stamps and a pencil sharpener sitting charred on the stoop. "Ow, it's still hot!" said Casey Levey, 7, who had cried when she heard of the fire. "This is Miss Croker's!" said sister Ciara, 11. "I have to give it back to her."

More than 100 firefighters responded to the blaze in the building that houses three classrooms of first-graders. Officials say they will find space for the 62 students while repairs, which will be covered by insurance, are done. District officials said repairing and rebuilding the area damaged is under review with insurance adjusters.

School district officials said Hogan was taken to a hospital and "is now alert and resting comfortably."

"He's a great superintendent, I saw him here and he was very concerned and shocked. I think he took it very personally," said Chris Fidis, 51, who lives three blocks away and said the scene looked like a "war zone."

Rosalie Norton, 75, president of West Hempstead Community Support Association, said the suspicious fire goes beyond "normal teenagers having fun."

"It's one thing to have a firecracker, it's another to have a device that can cause this amount of damage," she said.

Police said neighbors heard one or two bangs, possibly windows being blown out, and saw several teens running from the back of the school. Neighbors said they heard "one calling out to the other, if they were hurt, which leads us to believe that in setting this blaze, it's possible that one of the people involved may have sustained some kind of an injury," said the police department's chief spokesman, Nassau County Det. Lt. Kevin Smith.

With Matthew Chayes and Rachel Bryson-Brockmann