Officials at Hempfield and Penn Manor school districts are disciplining students in the wake of separate incidents involving dangerous behavior and alleged sexual activity on school buses.

Penn Manor has disciplined three Marticville Middle School students for running and screaming and jumping over seats on a bus leaving the school this week.

The bus driver, who appears to ignore the activity in a video of the incident posted on YouTube, was fired.

In Hempfield School District, disciplinary action is pending against four students allegedly involved in sexual activity on a bus headed from the high school to the Mount Joy campus of Lancaster County Career & Technology Center.

Hempfield officials would not identify the students by name or gender nor provide details of the incident. But sources said it involved oral sex between students.

The incident, which occurred the week of Dec. 19, was reported to district officials this week, Superintendent Brenda Becker said.

Hempfield conducted an investigation and contacted East Hempfield police, she said. The Lancaster County District Attorney's Office also was notified.

Becker provided few details of the incident, saying only that it involved "inappropriate behavior" that violated school rules.

According to a source, a female student performed oral sex on at least one male student in the back of the bus as other students watched.

The bus was equipped with a video camera, but a video recording of the incident was not available, Becker said. One source said a student filmed the incident, but Becker said the district does not believe that occurred.

"The administrators and school resource officer investigated any potential filming with a camera phone and found no evidence of that," she said.

Becker said the district immediately began an investigation and notified police after learning of the incident.

"We take any inappropriate behavior very seriously, and the safety of our students is of the utmost importance to us," she said.

"When students make bad decisions, as students sometimes do, we investigate completely and address it directly."

East Hempfield police Chief  Steve Skiles could not immediately be reached for comment. District Attorney Craig Stedman declined to comment.

The Penn Manor incident occurred Tuesday on a bus that was transporting students home from Marticville Middle School.

The video of that incident, filmed by a student on the bus, shows several youths running back and forth, screaming and jumping over seats on the moving vehicle.

At one point, one of the students apparently starts bleeding from a cut and gets blood on a sweatshirt, prompting cries of "AIDS! AIDS! AIDS!" A student then runs to the front of the bus, opens a window and attempts to throw the sweatshirt outside.

Throughout the six-minute video, the bus driver appears to do nothing to admonish or try to stop the students and just keeps driving.

"I'm not sure what's worse — the bus driver not trying to control the kids or seventh- and eighth-graders being that out of control," a Marticville parent, who asked that her name not be used, said in an email.

Eschbach Bus Service, which contracts with Penn Manor to transport Marticville students, fired the driver this week.

"The driver did not follow proper protocol and was terminated," Jacob Menapace, Eschbach's director of operations, said in a prepared statement.

Menapace declined to discuss the incident further or respond to a reporter's questions.

Penn Manor learned of the incident Thursday night, when a parent sent Marticville Principal Richard Eby a link to the bus ride video, district spokeswoman Cindy Rhoades said.

"The district will not tolerate this type of risky behavior," she said in an email.

After examining the tape, Penn Manor contacted the parents of six students and took disciplinary action against three of the pupils, Rhoades said. She declined to specify what action was taken, citing student confidentiality regulations.

The parents who were called in "were as appalled as we were at the behavior of the students," Rhoades said.

"We took immediate action, and we're thankful the parents were as supportive as they were," she said. "We certainly expect more out of our students."

bwallace@lnpnews.com