By ELVA RAMIREZ, BOB KAPPSTATTER and ROBERT F. MOORE
Additional reporting by Monique El-Faizy, Jonathan Lemire and News Wire Services

Dozens of Catholic school students returning from a teacher's funeral were injured in the Bronx yesterday when their yellow bus collided with a car and flipped.

Skidding across the highway, the bus kicked up sparks as it turned onto its side amid a chorus of screams and shattering glass. "Make it stop!" several kids yelled. "Make it stop!"

Scores of firefighters and paramedics rushed to the 11:20a.m. wreck on the Major Deegan Expressway, climbing through the bus windows to rescue students who hadn't already been led to safety by their principal and teachers.

"I guess we lost control," 12-year-old Matthew Lyons said after his nervous father picked him up from Montefiore Medical Center. "Everyone started screaming and we tipped over."

Forty-six children and eight adults were treated at a makeshift triage or taken to area hospitals. Most of them suffered only bumps and bruises. The most seriously injured appeared to be a child with a broken arm.

A Mickey Mouse memo pad, overturned seat cushions and glass rosary beads lay abandoned inside the overturned bus. Its windshield was cracked.

"God smiled on me," said 13-year-old Khoreece Mendoza, who escaped injury.

The students from St. Joseph's Elementary School-Yorkville on the upper East Side were returning to class from a funeral Mass for their beloved teacher Timothy Coakley at St. Barnabas Church.

Coakley, 24, taught social studies for two years at the E. 87th St. school before dying of cancer this week.

"He was our best teacher ever," said a sixth-grader, whose parents asked that he be identified only as Edward.

The school bus was heading southbound on the Deegan when it was rammed by a Mitsubishi sedan trying to merge onto the expressway near W. 233rd St. in Kingsbridge, police said.

Officials credited teachers and the principal, Theresa Bernero, for insisting that students wear their seat belts during the trip and then helping evacuate most of the kids.

"We believe the seat belts were key," said Assistant Deputy Fire Chief James Esposito.

The bus driver, Yolanda Mays, and two people in the car that accidentally triggered the wreck were treated for minor injuries. Supervisors at the Yonkers-based Supertrans Bus Co., which owns the bus, said Mays is one of their best drivers. Cops did not issue any summonses.

Most of the injured students were treated at Montefiore Medical Center, where social workers counseled the children as they waited for their worried parents.

"I was afraid," said Blanche Jones, a mother from Pelham Parkway. "But my son called me before I got there to tell me he was okay."