Non-English Bus

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Irregular News for 01.12.07

 

St. Paul, MN -- A school bus driver let Rachel Armstrong's three children board the bus Monday morning, but he warned them that he wouldn't give them a ride home that afternoon, nor could they ever ride his route again.

 

The problem: Armstrong's 10-year-old twin girls and 8-year-old son speak English. According to their mother, the driver told them the route had been designated for non-English speakers only.

 

Armstrong said Wednesday that she got a call from a worried daughter who didn't know how she was going to get home. "She thought they had done something wrong," she said.

 

So a furious Armstrong had to leave work early to pick up her stranded kids from Phalen Lake Elementary School.

 

St. Paul schools spokeswoman Dayna Kennedy acknowledged Thursday that school officials handled the situation poorly, but said the reason Armstrong's children were ineligible to ride the bus was because they lived outside the school's attendance area - not because they spoke English.

 

The bus route was meant to serve a language academy at Phalen Lake for Hmong kids learning English, and the district's academies all have separate bus routes to keep their students together.

 

Kennedy said the breakdown happened when officials discovered the family lived outside of Phalen Lake's attendance area. The family moved last year. The plan had been to tell them they would not be legally eligible for bus service after the winter break.

 

"We made a mistake. The family was not properly notified," she said.

 

Armstrong can keep sending her kids to Phalen Lake, but under regulations must provide their own transportation, Kennedy said.

 

Armstrong said she arrived home Wednesday to find a message from the principal on her answering machine.

 

"She would prefer them to stay there rather than leave, and she would like to work on some kind of resolution," Armstrong said.

 

A simple solution, she said, would be to let her daughters keep riding the bus.

 

"It's so simple, but they want to come with the red tape and everything," she said. "As long as the kids get to school, that should be the main point."

 

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