Updated

Two Philadelphia families are outraged after their kindergarten sons apparently wandered out of their elementary school classroom and were found over an hour later about a mile away.

NBC10 reports the teacher of 6-year-old Zavier McIntyre and 5-year-old Ameen Smith admitted she saw the children run out of her classroom at M. Hall Stanton School Wednesday morning, but says she could not chase them because she had to tend to the other students.

The station reports the teacher instead claims she called the front office. However no one was there to man the front door of the school, which is usually watched by a parent volunteer.

The boys' mothers tell NBC10 as far as they know the school was not even aware the children were missing until a neighbor saw them wandering the neighborhood and called the school.

"These kids walked right past the office out the front door and nobody seen it," one of the boys' grandmother Phylis Thomas told NBC10. "Something needs to be done in that school."

A school district police officer eventually found the children about a mile away and returned them to their parents. A school district spokesman tells NBC10 that an investigation into the incident is underway.

"We are following up with the school district and the police district because this cannot happen to nobody's kid," Ameen's mom Kishia Smith told NBC 10.

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