MINNEAPOLIS (AP) -- St. Paul School District officials are apologizing to parents whose children were stranded at school until late Monday night because of the snowstorm that dumped a foot of snow on the Twin Cities.

The district placed automated calls to parents about 7 p.m. to alert them that some students were stranded at school because buses got stuck in the snow. Parents vented on the district's Facebook page angered that the district failed to heed forecasters' warnings about the snowfall.

School district spokeswoman Toya Stewart Downey says a handful of schools still had students in the building at 10 p.m. School district officials said had they known the city would get up to 8 inches of snow during the afternoon hours, they would have ``taken a different course of action.''

Both St. Paul and Minneapolis public schools were closed Tuesday, as were most schools in southern Minnesota.

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