(note: highlights added)By Associated Press, ASSOCIATED PRESS
The school bus driver let Rachel Armstrong's three kids board the bus Monday morning in St. Paul, but he told her that he wouldn't give them a ride home that afternoon, nor could they ride his route again.
The problem: Armstrong's 10-year-old twin girls and 8-year-old son speak English. The driver told them
the route had been designated for non-English speakers only.Armstrong said that she got a call from a worried daughter who didn't know how she was going to get home. So a furious Armstrong left work early to get her stranded kids from Phalen Lake Elementary School.
School administrators apologized but didn't agree to let her children keep riding the bus,
as they'd been doing all year."It is our responsibility to ensure the safety of these kids, and we made a mistake," said Dayna Kennedy, a district spokeswoman. "The kids should have gotten home that day."
When the family moved last year, they landed outside of Phalen's attendance area. Armstrong said she was told her kids would have to transfer if they wanted to keep riding a bus, "or I'd have to find my own way to get them to school."
Armstrong said she arrived home Wednesday to find a phone message from the principal.
"She would prefer them to stay ... and she would like to work on some kind of resolution," Armstrong said.
"It's so simple, but they want to come with the red tape and everything," she said.
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