UPDATE: St. Paul Public Schools says the bus driver has been removed from the school district’s routes.

“While the stop was the correct one, if students are observed to be confused or upset, they should be taken to the next school on the route for safe transport home,” a school district spokesperson said. “We apologize that this protocol was not followed in this case and have taken corrective action.”

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Hindi Abdi drove to Crossroads Montessori School in St. Paul on Monday to pick up her children, ages 4 and 6, from the first day of their second full week of school as planned, arriving to discover her kids had been placed on a bus instead.

Abdi said her son, who turned 6 years old that day, rode the bus sometimes last school year, and he would get dropped off at a day care center.

This year, with her 4-year-old daughter now at the same school for pre-kindergarten, she opted to start picking both of them up from school herself. On Monday, they weren’t there.

Not panicking yet, Abdi says she called the day care center to check for her children there since she says the school told her they were placed on a bus by mistake.

“I called the day care because their usual routine the prior year for my son was that the day care goes and grabs him from his bus stop, and they said that he wasn’t on the bus,” Abdi shared.

That’s when she said fear kicked in.

“I started getting nervous when they couldn’t figure out where the kids were,” she said. “Like, which bus they were on?”

20 minutes passed like an eternity before she said the school told her the kids were on the wrong bus headed to the intersection of Sherburne Avenue and St. Albans Street, an unfamiliar route, to an unfamiliar street, still blocks from home.

So, she raced over. She didn’t find a bus, though. Instead, Frogtown firefighters were there waiting for her.

A fire equipment officer who was there at the time said he saw the young siblings “holding hands and crying” and brought them inside. He called the kids “heroes” for sticking together and getting to the station.

“Come to find out, they’re out here for, like, a good 10-15 minutes on their own,” Abdi said.

Asked, a St. Paul Public Schools spokesperson said the school district policy says pre-K students can be dropped off without a parent present “if they are with an older sibling,” even one as young as six years old, and that the driver “stopped for several minutes and confirmed with the school and dispatch it was the correct stop before letting the students off.”

“I’m not really upset with school, as I am with this bus driver that let my child off, both of my children off with no adults in a neighborhood that’s not greatest and just alone, and they are so little,” Abdi said.

“They said they thought they were gonna sleep on the sidewalk that night. They thought we abandoned them… Like, my trust is completely broken. Their trust is broken.”

In an official statement, a St. Paul Public Public Schools spokesperson said the two siblings “were dropped off at their assigned bus stop close to a fire station,” adding, “We regret that this situation occurred and apologize for the anxiety that it caused the family.”

Abdi said she’s been trying to get answers about how this happened and hasn’t heard back from the school district since Monday.

“And, it was just unfortunate that nobody’s, like, really facing any consequences for this and not having been given an actual explanation of how this happened or if this could possibly happen again,” she said.

Read the full statement from the school district below:

Saint Paul Public Schools takes student safety very seriously, which includes safely transporting 25,000 students to and from school every day. On Monday, two siblings were dropped off at their assigned bus stop close to a fire station. We’d like to thank the fire department for their assistance in helping these students get home safely. 

We regret that this situation occurred and apologize for the anxiety that it caused the family. We are working with all parties involved to review what happened and improve our communication and coordination to prevent similar situations in the future.