Oct 18, 2002 By April Straughters/ 5 min read

Redstone Township Police spoke with a group of Geibel Catholic High School students Thursday after the students allegedly threw “small objects” from the bus at teachers picketing at Cardale Elementary School the day before in protest of the strike. According to Diana Michael, spokesperson for the Brownsville Education Association, a group of teachers said a bus full of Geibel Catholic High School students from the Brownsville Area School District slowed down while students held “derogatory” signs to the window, yelled obscenities and threw “small objects” at the teachers as they picketed in the rain Wednesday.

Brownsville Area teachers have been on strike since Monday. Teachers have worked without a contract since last year and negotiations have been ongoing since January 2001.

In fact, union and school board members resumed talks after Thursday’s school board meeting.

The union’s main sticking points in the talks are health care, salaries and an early-retirement incentive.

Michael said she was not there, but teachers at the scene said the students began taunting teachers on Monday by yelling things out the window. She said their behavior got worse throughout the week.

“On Monday things were yelled. Tuesday it got worse and by Wednesday they were throwing things. I guess you can say it got progressively worse each day,” Michael said.

Michael said the signs said things like “Teamsters strike, teacher’s don’t,” but she would not comment on the small objects that were thrown out of the window because she said she was not there. She did say that a teacher had a video camera and recorded the behavior of the students.

Michael said the teachers picketing at Cardale “were quite” upset with the behavior of the students, especially because the entire group, except one teacher, was Catholic. She did not know the exact number of teachers picketing at Cardale.

Redstone Township Police Capt. Denny Field waited for the bus to arrive at Cardale Elementary School Thursday afternoon. Teachers had already left the scene.

He said he was told that students at 3:11 p.m. Wednesday threw candy and condoms from the windows at teachers as the bus 373, owned by D. Grenaldo Inc., drove by.

Field said, the bus was stopped Wednesday by the township’s code enforcer Robert Stogran. He said he was there Thursday to talk to the students about their behavior and find out who was responsible for throwing the objects.

Field said it is a clear violation of the law to throw objects from a moving vehicle.

“There’s potential of someone getting hurt,” Field said. “I’m not looking to arrest anyone, but I will address the problem, and if it would continue, I may have no other alternative but to arrest someone. Ultimately, we would like to focus our attention elsewhere in the township, but, obviously, there is a problem that needs to be addressed.”

After addressing the students, Field and bus driver, Melinda Warner, the name given in police reports, said that all the students on the bus were unaware of who threw objects from the window or if anyone threw objects at all.

Paula Lappe-Barber, a Brownsville resident, waited in a parking lot across the street from the elementary school to see what the officer planned to say to the students and how teachers would respond to the bus full of students after the incident the day before.

“I wanted to make sure teachers weren’t blocking the bus or accusing the students of something they didn’t do,” she said, adding that from the information she got from her daughter, the students only held up signs that read things like “go back to work.”

Barber’s daughter, Rachel Lappe, 15, attends Geibel and rides that bus.

Geibel principal Vince Masce was not available for comment, but Lappe said he did address the students from the bus on the issue Thursday at school.

Lappe, a junior at Geibel, said on Wednesday a police officer “chased down” the bus, and asked the bus driver to get out of the bus and talk to him.

She said teachers followed behind the officer.

“We don’t support the strike. Most of us went to school here and we don’t feel it’s a good school and we don’t feel (the strike) is justified,” Lappe.

Lappe said she did not see students throwing objects from the bus, but said that she usually sits in the front of the bus. She said to her knowledge only signs were held out of the windows.

“Teachers should behave better than to bother kids with signs,” Barber said. “People think these kids have no interest in the strike, but they have quite an interest. They live here. Their parents pay taxes here.”

Lappe said she does not support the Brownsville teachers or the district and that is why she sends her daughter to a Catholic school.

Michael said it’s not the signs or the opinions that angered the teachers, but the fact that things were thrown.

“Everyone has an opinion. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but throwing objects from the bus is against the law.”