ZHENGNING, Gansu - The board chairman of a privately-run kindergarten in Northwest China's Gansu Province has been formally arrested after a deadly school bus crash that killed 19 kids, local procurators said Sunday.

Twenty-one, including 19 preschoolers and two adults, died when the school bus, originally a nine-seat van, illegally carrying 64 people, crashed head-on with a coal truck in Yulinzi township, Zhengning county in Qingyang city, Wednesday morning. A further 43 were injured.

Li Jungang, board chairman of the Little Doctor Kindergarten and also owner of the school bus, was arrested on suspicion of causing a traffic accident according to the Chinese criminal law, a spokesman with the Zhengning procuratorate said.

Li had violated traffic laws and regulations by refitting the van and having the seats removed to allow more passengers to be crammed in. He had also ordered others to drive the overloaded school bus, the spokesman said.

A kindergarten teacher and the bus driver died along with the children, who were between 3 and 5 years old, and all 43 surviving children were injured.

With over 700 children, the Little Doctor has only four vans with all seats having been removed.

Parents of each deceased children will receive 436,000 yuan ($68,500) in compensation and consolation money, local government has said.

A new public kindergarten will open at the same location Monday, the Qingyang city government has announced in a statement.

It will be equipped with a 45-seat school bus donated by an oil company, it said.

The statement also said that the government will earmark 680 million yuan, 100 million yuan more than the earlier pledge, to build 200 public kindergartens in the next three years.

Each township will have a public kindergarten equipped with a standard school bus and every county seat will have five to 10 renovated or new kindergartens to ensure kids can study close to home, according to the statement.