KANSAS CITY, Kan. -- Inclement weather and faulty equipment kept 60 students from Arrowhead Middle School from a much anticipated rally.

The students were headed to Washington, D.C., to attend the Rev. Al Sharpton's rally, but they never made it.

"We was mad when we found out," said eighth-grader Shawn Loveless.

Loveless said he and his classmates felt cursed from the start, since their trip was canceled on Friday morning by Sharpton because of a lack of funding.

After some scrambling, however, school officials were able to get $7,000 from the student council to pay for two buses and the group hit the road -- but then thunderstorms hit them.

"We ran into rain, a thunderstorm, a tornado warning," said Eve May, parent and president of the Arrowhead Parent Teachers Association.

The troubles didn't stop there. A flat tire in Cincinnati forced them to switch buses, and it wasn't a positive change.

"They ended up being what I call the buses from hell," said May.

"It kept breaking down," Loveless said. "Every time we stopped, they had to have a mechanic work on it."

Loveless's mother, Kristy Bennett, took pictures of the mechanics trying to fix the bus.

"The bus had been sitting out in someone's back yard for the past 15 years," Bennett said.

According to Bennett, neither the air brakes nor the air conditioning worked. She also said the buses smelled like urine and that the seats were covered with bags to hide the mold.

KCTV5 contacted C and C Touring Company, based in Cincinnati, about the buses the students switched to. They did not return calls for comment.

"At this point, we realized the safety of the kids was in jeopardy, so we did not go to D.C.," she said.

Instead, the students spent the day touring Cincinnati and visiting museums until they could get back on their original buses later that day and head back home.

"I want to know who dropped the ball," May said. "Who dropped the ball?"

Sharpton organized the nationwide rally in Washington, D.C., to commemorate the landmark case Brown v. the Board of Education.

According to fliers sent out, Sharpton's organization promised to provide free buses to and from the rally but those buses never arrived at Arrowhead Middle school and the blame game has begun.

Sharpton places the onus on local organizers while they point fingers back at Sharpton's employees.

"I don't think Al Sharpton knew what his staff was telling me," said organizer Saundra McFadden-Weaver.

McFadden-Weaver works with the local chapter of the National Action Network, founded by Sharpton, and said she received a packet of information from the national headquarters about 10 days before the rally, stating that transportation to Washington, D.C., would be free as long as the buses were filled with people.

After the group of students volunteered to go, McFadden-Weaver said Sharpton's group told her no buses would be sent. So she began trying to find alternate means of travel.

"We'd been on the phone all night trying to secure buses and donations so as not to disappoint the kids," she said.

In the end, they did find two buses, but they still did not reach their intended destination. The rally went on without them, and now parents want answers.

KCTV5 spoke with Sharpton via telephone about whether the foiled field trip was his fault. Sharpton said McFadden-Weaver missed the deadline on applying for free transportation, which needed to be sent in two weeks before the rally. According to Sharpton, the paperwork was submitted three days prior to the event, and there was not enough time to secure transportation.

McFadden-Weaver, however, said she spoke with Sharpton's employees almost daily and said they had indicated to her that they would work with her to get the kids to the rally. She said that she was never told that the group could not go because of the missed deadline.

"I'm going to give Al Sharpton the benefit of the doubt and assume he didn't know about the miscommunication between staff and me," she said.

Despite the roadblocks and unrealized agenda, the students said they still had fun in Cincinnati.

Sharpton told KCTV5 that if the group had successfully arrived in Washington, D.C., he would have reimbursed their bus fare.

McFadden-Weaver said she hopes he considers reimbursing the school anyway, since the students would have made it to the event if it hadn't been for the weather and faulty buses.

Parents and the school principal are determined to get the students to Washington, D.C., either in the next school year or the year after.