Palm Beach County school leaders have voted to fire a bus driver who left a 15-year-old Suncoast High School student alone at a park 4 miles from the student’s home after he missed his stop.
Gerald Marston, now 69, told investigators that he left the student at Lake Lytal Park near West Palm Beach only after confirming the student’s dad was coming to pick him up. Marston, who has been a district bus driver since 2016, said he “thought it was OK to leave him.”
But the March 11 incident was infuriating and concerning to the parents of Tony Mancuso, who was forced to exit the bus in an area he didn’t know.
“I just want to know what the consequence is. The guy has to be held accountable,” Tony’s father, David Mancuso, said Monday. “If this were me and I had left my child somewhere, I would be in cuffs right now.”
Marston is not facing criminal charges for the incident. On Sept. 18, the school board unanimously approved his firing. If Marston does not appeal the school board’s decision, his termination will be effective Oct. 11.
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How did Palm Beach County school bus driver leave student four miles from home?
Tony Mancuso, who regularly wakes up at his home in suburban West Palm Beach before 5 a.m. to get to school at Suncoast, fell asleep on the afternoon bus ride home after class let out at about 3 p.m. He missed exiting near his home, which his father said is usually the final stop on the route in the afternoon.
When Tony awoke around 4:10 p.m., he was the only student on the bus. The district’s investigation showed he walked up to Marston in the driver’s seat and said, “I’m sorry. I fell asleep and need to go home now.”
Marston told him he needed to get off the bus and call his parents to come pick him up from Lake Lytal Park. School bus footage shows Marston telling Tony, “I can’t go back. Sorry about that.”
Mancuso got off the bus at 4:13 p.m.
Then, Marston left the park to begin his next route.
David Mancuso, who was working in Loxahatchee that day, got a call from his wife, Krystal, about their son being stranded. Tony, then 15 years old and unable to drive, didn’t recognize the park or the part of town he was in. His parents needed to use an app to track his phone in order to figure out where to pick him up.
Once he picked up his son, Mancuso called Suncoast’s principal and reached out to school police, the district transportation office and several school board members about the incident. Although his son was not harmed, Mancuso wanted to ensure no students would be left unsupervised by drivers in the future.
“He’s 15. Where is the line? What if it was my daughter? She’s in middle school,” David Mancuso said.
Of the school district, he added, “Do you have something in your policy that says, ‘At this age we can do whatever the hell we want?’ You’re responsible for a child, whether they’re five years old or a teenager.”
School records show driver had three crashes in 2020, 2021 and 2022
Mancuso’s notes and calls to the district prompted the start of an investigation almost two months later on May 2.
The investigation found that Marston didn’t do his end-of-route safety check of the bus, which he’s required to do to check for students, personal property or broken equipment. That type of check would have helped him find Mancuso earlier.
The investigation also determined that Marston improperly told Tony to exit the bus alone and that he never called his supervisor nor the bus dispatchers to report the incident.
Video footage from the bus showed district investigators that Marston gave Mancuso directions to exit the park on foot and return to his bus stop — a 4-mile walk along busy Haverhill Road that would have taken Tony more than an hour and a half to complete, according to Google Maps.
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About 15 minutes after Tony exited the bus, the footage shows Marston drove out of the park and stopped to ask the teen if someone was coming to pick him up. Tony replied that his father was coming, and Marston drove away.
Later, Marston acknowledged to the district that he knew the park was far from Mancuso’s bus stop. Marston’s supervisor Clarinda Shabazz told district investigators Marston “had more than enough time to return the student to his stop or to the Central Transportation Facility (located one mile west of Lake Lytal Park). Instead, Mr. Marston lost contact with the student when he left him alone and unsupervised in the park.”
Marston did not return a phone call or an emailed request for comment.
School district records show Marston received three warnings in 2020, 2021 and 2022 for getting into accidents while driving his bus that the district deemed “preventable.”
His personnel records do not give details on those crashes or whether children were on board when the accidents occurred.
Katherine Kokal is a journalist covering education at The Palm Beach Post. You can reach her at [email protected]. Help support our work; subscribe today!
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Florida school bus driver may be fired for leaving kid miles from home
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