Bus drivers have to focus on driving safely. Expecting them to maintain bully free interactions among 20+ kids is absurd. Pay for an adult monitor on the bus.
Kids will find ways to harass each other: between classes, lunch times, recess, etc. Schools can probably do more, but I doubt they can fix bullying alone. And certainly not with the resources they're given today.
You know how women often don’t report sexual harassment and assault? It’s because if they do report it, they will suffer further victimization and their chances at any just outcome are too low.
Same thing with bullying in schools. Kids don’t report it because if they do so, they will be opening themselves up to further victimization, and the people they report it to will not take sufficient action to stop it.
All schools need to do is make it safe to report bullying, prioritizing the victim’s safety. Then with a report they don’t need blanket surveillance, they can just do targeted surveillance to verify the reports. Once verified, they should take immediate action to put a permanent stop to it.
I agree with the problem you identify. I was both a bully, and a bullied person at times during my school days. For me the bullying of me brought on the bullying by me, I feel.
I don't see any practical answers in your comment. Recognising schools should "makes it safe to report bullying" is one thing. How though? It seems entirely intractable - you seem to suggest blanket surveillance of all children everywhere?
You don’t need surveillance if you have relationships and trust. Bullying is intractable because traditional schooling is essentially and structurally exactly that: the bullying of kids by adults. It’s only logical that it results in the bullying of kids by kids.
Make teachers (and parents) people of trust, not only of arbitrary authority, and you create options to address bullying between kids as well.
Kids understand justice from a very early age. It's one of the things they need out of parenting. But things that go on at school are not entirely within the remit of the parents, because the school is in loco parentis.
You missed the part that says "viewed and listened to hours of video from the bus". The evidence is already available. The problem is that no one was bothering to look at it to check the kids were OK.
Kids will find ways to harass each other: between classes, lunch times, recess, etc.
This is true, but in most countries it doesn't escalate to mass murder. That's specifically a US thing (https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/school-sh...). So while you're right, I don't think it's fair to suggest it's hard to stop this problem or to resign to it being typical kids behaviour. The shooting aspect bucks the global norm.
No there isn't. America has 120 guns per 100 people.
The closest runner-up country, the Falkand Islands, is almost exactly half of that - at 62 guns per 100 people [1]. There's a sharp decline from there.
That said, I've long shared the belief that despite the absurd number of guns in the USA, and how they literally outweigh the population; the average person ought to re-calibrate have more faith in humanity and respect for their access to firearms, because the stats for gun violence are not nearly as high as you'd think if they're that accessible.
Guns per capita isn't a good measure because some people own a lot of guns. Gun owning households is a better way to test how many kids potentially have access to a gun - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percent_of_households_with_gun... - America is still top at 42%, but the next country is at 37% and there are several above 20%.
Kids will find ways to harass each other: between classes, lunch times, recess, etc. Schools can probably do more, but I doubt they can fix bullying alone. And certainly not with the resources they're given today.