Port Jefferson athletic director Debra Ferry learned of the Virginia Tech helmet ratings after Shoreham-Wading River high school player Thomas Cutinella died as the result of a helmet-to-helmet hit during a game last season.

Ferry said she was spurred to take a closer look at her inventory. Any helmet that wasn’t rated five stars, she crossed off the list.

Ferry planned to replace those helmets with five-star helmets, but then she asked herself this question: “If this was your son, which helmet would you want on his head?” She said she struggled with the thought of giving a brand-new helmet to one student and an older — but still highly rated — helmet to another student.

She said she knew then the only option she was comfortable with was replacing Port Jefferson’s entire inventory with the best available helmets. Going that route is rare; schools typically buy about 10 new helmets per year at a cost of between $150 and $400 each.

“If you’re going to provide our kids with the top of the line, then provide all our kids with top of the line,” she said. “It’s a difficult battle to fight as an athletic director at a school district to say, ‘We’re going to implement this process slowly’ when it comes to a kid’s safety.”

She presented the information regarding the helmets, including pricing, to the Board of Education at a Dec. 9 meeting and was given the go-ahead.

The next day, records show, she bought 50 five-star helmets for $14,749.

The Oyster Bay Board of Education debated and then voted on whether to eliminate the football program at an open meeting last December.

Board member Michael Castellano, 54, a general surgeon, said his goal that day was to cancel the program because of the risk of significant injury.

Two months before the vote, Shoreham-Wading River high school football player Thomas Cutinella died after a helmet-to-helmet hit on the field.

“[Football is] a danger, with the injuries I see, the injuries I read about,” Castellano said. “I always thought it was hard to ethically pay for something that’s so dangerous to kids.”

The board voted 5-1 in favor of keeping football. Castellano was the lone dissenter.

“We listened to the community,” board member Jennifer Romeo said. “The community came forth and said they don’t want to stop football.”

Castellano said he was satisfied that he at least spurred a conversation in his community about football’s injury risk.

“I wanted to make sure everyone was aware how dangerous this sport is,” he said. “Some parents don’t realize how dangerous this sport is, what the long-term ramifications can be. I wanted to put it out there.”

Out of the discussion came a promise to spend whatever was necessary to upgrade the team’s equipment — notably the helmets.

In June, Oyster Bay purchased 85 five-star helmets from Riddell that feature a bendable forehead that is intended to absorb more impact. Inside those helmets are sensors that send a signal to a handheld device when a player receives a hit above a certain threshold of force.

The total cost was $33,915, according to the purchase order obtained by Newsday through a Freedom of Information Law request. Riddell said Oyster Bay is the first school on Long Island outfitted with these sensors.

“To me this gives us and our trainer a chance to look at all 11 players [on the field] at a given time — or all 80 or so athletes that are in our program at a given time — because they’re all going to be hooked into the system and hooked right up to the trainer,” athletic director Kevin Trentowski said. “It’s a set of eyes that goes on every athlete.”

Two weeks into the regular season, Trentowski said the biggest impact of the sensors has been allowing the school’s athletic trainer to go to other sporting events as opposed to feeling obliged to be at all of the football practices. “When she returns back to the football site the helmets alert her to players worth checking on,” he said.

Trentowski said the sensor has gone off “only a handful of times” and none of them have led to a player being diagnosed with a concussion.