West Side Elementary School swung its doors open again Monday, April 13, 2026, exactly 34 days after a March 10 electrical fire tore through its library and central rooms and sent more than 200 students scrambling to temporary classrooms across four other Cold Spring Harbor School District buildings.
Don’t underestimate what 34 days of displacement does to elementary school kids. Leif Koka, a West Side Elementary student, summed it up better than any administrator’s press release could.
“It just feels so normal to be back here after being in a new school for three weeks. And normal sounds pretty perfect to me,” said Koka, speaking on reopening morning.
That quote cuts right to the point. The fire broke out in the early morning hours of Tuesday, March 10, when the building was empty, so no students or staff were hurt. Nassau County fire investigators determined the cause was electrical, with the library and the surrounding central rooms taking the worst of it. The damage was bad enough that district officials had no choice but to shut the school immediately and figure out where 200-plus kids were going to learn the next day.
Nassau County Fire Coordinator Michael Uttaro said the response was substantial. Roughly 150 firefighters from 16 departments across Nassau and Suffolk Counties responded to the blaze and got it under control within two hours. That’s a significant regional mobilization for a single school fire, and it speaks to how serious the situation looked when those first alarm calls went out. Nassau County’s Office of Emergency Management coordinated resources across both counties during the incident.
With West Side shut down, the Cold Spring Harbor School District split students up by grade level. Second graders relocated to Goose Hill School. Third through fifth graders went to Lloyd Harbor School. Sixth graders were folded temporarily into the Junior and Senior High School population. For families, that meant three weeks of new bus routes, unfamiliar drop-off procedures, and kids trying to concentrate in classrooms that weren’t theirs. Nobody’s pretending that was easy.
The district worked through March and into April to repair the damaged sections and get the building ready for students again. It’s worth pointing out that the turnaround from a significant structural fire to a full reopening in roughly a month isn’t automatic. It takes contractor access, insurance approvals, code inspections, and a lot of decisions made under pressure.
Principal John Barnes acknowledged the community effort when he addressed families and staff on reopening morning. “I loved seeing people greeting each other this morning and am grateful to our village,” he told those gathered. Barnes didn’t take sole credit. His comments pointed outward, toward the village and the broader Cold Spring Harbor community that supported the school through the closure.
Superintendent Joseph Monastero was direct about what the day represented. “Today marked a truly special milestone with the reopening of West Side School,” Monastero said in a statement the district posted to its Facebook page. He described the atmosphere as “filled with excitement and positive energy.” As Long Island Press reported, Monastero also called the energy in the building “unmistakable and a reminder of what makes Cold Spring Harbor so special.”
Hard to argue with that framing, though taxpayers in the district will reasonably want a full accounting of what the repairs cost, how much the insurance covered, and whether the temporary arrangements at Goose Hill and the other schools ran up any additional expenses. Those numbers haven’t been fully released publicly, and they should be.
The library, which absorbed the worst damage in the March 10 fire, isn’t back in service yet. That repair work continues. Students are back in their school, but the building isn’t completely whole.
What happened at West Side could’ve been far worse. An early morning electrical fire in a building full of books and paper, and nobody was inside. The response from 150 firefighters across 16 departments held the damage to one wing of a school rather than the whole structure. And 34 days later, Leif Koka walked back through the front door and found something that felt normal.