I would expect that it was sodium thiosulfate, and when a chemist reports to a non-chemist who reports it possibly to others up the chain of command these sorts of things happen.  I could imagine the  "sodium thiosulfate" being mis-repeated as "sodium bicarbonate" somewhere along the chain.  But there are some public email addresses for the high school if someone wants to run that to ground: http://www.brookings.k12.or.us/highschool/staff.cfm

I've mentioned here a piranha solution incident I witnessed  a couple of times.  The campus paper wrote it up as the student was mixing/playing with battery acid and window cleaner.  I guess someone tried to simplify things for the reporter by saying sulfuric acid is used in car batteries and acetone is a window cleaner. Guess the reporter didn't have an analogy for the hydrogen peroxide or they would have said hair bleaching agent, too.  http://yarchive.net/chem/piranha_solution.html    Obviously one of the many valuable lessons of the Headlines feed is that hazard, risk, chemical identity, reactivity, etc. etc. are all very poorly communicated in the media for reasons to numerous to expound on here.

I=E2=80™ve made plenty of NI3 in my time. Do not try it at home. Or in a small room such as say, an elevator-(buy me a beer at a meeting and I'll tell you that story).

No, wait, TWO beers.

Rob Toreki