Officials work to avoid further bus-stop confusion

Officials with the St. Paul schools and a school bus company continue to examine what could have been done differently to avoid the sort of confusion that resulted in a 13-year-old girl not recognizing her bus stop and wandering her neighborhood for hours Monday night.

One possibility: Mailing bus-route and bus-stop details to parents a week before after-school activities start to better ensure that parents go over that information with their children.

"That's something I think that we could change," said Tim Williams, principal at Humboldt Junior High School, where 13-year-old Kai Thao is a student.

Thao suffered frostbite to her fingers and toes after wandering her Frogtown neighborhood, wearing a light jacket and sneakers on a late afternoon and early evening when temperatures dipped to 5 degrees. As of Wednesday afternoon, Kai Thao was listed in good condition at Regions Hospital in St. Paul.

A family spokesperson said doctors have not said when they will send Thao home. While she is improving, her toes are still tender.

It appears, according to bus company officials, that Thao did get off the bus at her designated stop. The issue was that it is not the same bus stop she uses when going home from her regular classes.

Monday was the first day for Thao in an after-school program. The after-school bus route is different and has different stops than the regular route, said Kimberly Mulcahy, a spokeswoman for First Student, the bus company.

"If she was accustomed to passing a certain number of stops and then getting off, well, now she is on a different bus going on a different route and making different designated stops," Mulcahy said.

Information about those changes in the after-school route was sent home with students the week before it began, Williams said. In addition, Thao's teacher asked her whether she knew her bus and stop on that first day of after-school classes. The teacher made a point to do this, the principal said, because Thao also got off at the wrong bus stop on her first day of school at Humboldt.

Williams said Thao told the teacher that she knew where to get off the bus.

On Monday when the driver came to the end of the route, Thao was still on the bus. Mulcahy said GPS data indicate that the driver backtracked the route and stopped at the correct stop for Thao. Drivers are not allowed to take students to their homes, Mulcahy said.

But Maly Vang, a friend of the family, said school and bus officials have been too quick to avoid responsibility.

"I'm just disappointed that everybody says they did the right thing and she did the wrong thing," Vang said. "She's a young girl who was scared. And that driver just told her to get off the bus."

Williams said officials continue to talk about ways to prevent this kind of thing from happening again.

"I honestly think that the job that we did, and the job that the after-school staff did, was a pretty good job," he said. But they may want to do more, he said.

That also includes continuing to remind kids to dress warmly when the weather is cold. Williams said it is a constant battle to get young teens for wear their coats or cover their heads as they walk out the door.

Even on the coldest days, teens wear clothes and shoes that may be fashionable, but prove flimsy for Minnesota winter conditions.

"I see it every day. I'll see it tonight after school. I see kids walk out of here without a coat on. They have a coat, but they carry it," he said. "I don't know if that issue will ever be solved. I think back to when I was in junior high and I did it, too."

James Walsh • 651-298-1541