District, bus vendor say communication failed after Feb. 13 bus mix-up that alarmed parents

At a Pottsgrove School District board meeting, Jennifer Hovey, chief operating officer of CMD, described a Feb. 13 evening incident in which students from multiple activity/club buses were loaded onto the same vehicle, producing confusion about passenger rosters, a missing‑student report, and a police‑directed hold of a bus for roughly an hour while drivers and police verified identities and reunited children with parents.

Hovey told the board the sequence began when a Ringing Rocks bus arrived at Lower Pottsgrove Elementary to pick up activity students while one of the district’s Lower Pottsgrove club buses was running late. “The driver’s biggest mistake was not stopping the children from boarding at the time that it happened,” Hovey said, and she described how power outages, poor radio reception in parts of Sanatoga and intermittent contact between dispatch and drivers complicated efforts to identify students and…