Bullied bus monitor given $500000 for being bad at her job.

[Aceo]

because she couldn't do anything about it

Exactly. At least you admit she could do nothing.
By being just a bus monitor i'm assuming she has pretty much zero power. Can't kick kids off the bus - how can they get home safely? Can't give kids detention - not a teacher. All she is there for is an adult presence which keeps most kids from being even worse.

[Thesh]

Let's look at that measly $15k a year. She obviously doesn't work all year. Most schools are in 180 days. Lets assume 2 hours in the morning, 2 hours in the afternoon. That averages out to $20 an hour. That's pretty good in my opinion. Especially when she's not doing her job. I'm sure the actual children that were bullied every day because she couldn't do anything about it would liked to have been given $80 a day for their trouble.

That's a fucking idiotic argument. Money per hour means jack shit. Hell, it doesn't even make up for it; I make several times that per hour for a full time job, but I would quit if I had to put up with that kind of shit every day. However, she couldn't, because that measly 15k a year is all she had to live on, and it's one of the few jobs she can get at her age.

Also, $10

[Tirian]

Lets assume 2 hours in the morning, 2 hours in the afternoon.

Let's not. Greece is a large suburban district in both population and area, and with staggered school start times there is no reason not to suspect that she's taking separate runs to the elementary, middle, and high schools. Especially since the bus schedules have to be set up for the worst of winter driving possibilities throughout the year, she could easily be spending three hours on the road for each of her shifts plus what ever it takes to get to and from the bus yard and whatever additional paperwork and training is required for the job.

And have you noticed that you're the only person anywhere to be continually throwing around the accusation that she wasn't doing her job? In fact, her job is to make sure that her passengers get safely to their destination, not to make sure that she doesn't take any lip from those passengers. If disciplining people who were bullying her were such a priority, don't you think the district would have done something when she filed complaints in the past?

I want to highlight this last point for people other than Tiberius, who is clearly just trolling at this point. The takeaway from this story shouldn't be that kids in Greece, NY are vicious bullies, it's that it took a viral video for the school district in Greece to get off their cans and address that their employees were forced to work in hostile environments with no support.

[Meteoric]

When I clicked on this thread, knowing nothing of the story other than the thread title, I expected outrage over a ridiculous lawsuit settlement or something.

But really? She didn't take 500k out of the school district's budget, or sue the parents for their college funds or something. People donating their own money, by their own personal decisions, according to their own consciences, out of kindness and empathy? This is not something to be angry about. This is something we wish would happen more often.

And honestly, one person getting sorta-wealthy for a sorta-decent reason makes me a helluvalot less upset than all the people elsewhere and elsewhen who got and are getting incredibly wealthy for incredibly bad reasons.

[jules.LT]

Her job was to keep the kids in line. This is a fucked up situation and she isn't really at fault, but the school really should have replaced her with someone who wasn't so unfit for the job.

Also, the most interesting post in this thread hasn't been answered at all:

It is sort of an interesting look at how people choose to donate money to "good causes". It's typically an emotional reaction, which naturally means that certain publicised, personable cases will get vastly disproportionately funded. It's like when there is some sad story about an abused or abandoned pet, and suddenly there will be hundreds of people offering to adopt that animal. That specific animal, and not any of the other thousands in the shelters that are going to get gassed. That's partly why I admire the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation so much - they're mission is specifically to take emotion out of the equation, and truly put money to the best use possible.

It is true, of course, that people have the absolute right to do anything they want with their money (even burn it). When Leona Helmsley died and left 12 million USD to her dog, people were up in arms about it. The dog received death threats. It's her money - she earned it (well, it was legally hers anyway), and she should be able to do what she wanted with it. She chose not to include two of her grandchildren in the will, but they managed to convince a judge to give them some of the dog's money. That sort of thing makes me really mad - she obviously had a reason to not give them any inheretence, and her wishes should be respected. I don't want some judge deciding after I die that he's better able to determine what to do with my money than I am.

People do all kinds of strange things with their money. I'm pretty adamant that sometimes their wishes shouldn't be respected, as was rightfully done in the case of that lady leaving all of her money to her dog.

In this case, meh. I sure hope that the lady gives off a significant share of the money she'll receive to some kind of more generally worthy cause.

[Lucrece]

So, how do you suggest she keep them in line? She wrote them up previously, didn't do shit. What other powers did this pudgy 68 year old have over a group of aggressive 7th graders, short of punching one in the face hard enough to scare the others and lose her job in the process? Verbal sparring would have done her little -- the outcome of verbal sparring is entirely reliant on audience receptiveness; you can say the cleverest thing ever and if that audience hates your guts, it will do little to discourage the bullies as they prop up each other.

There was nothing she could do, and for people to say that these people have power is clearly ignorant of how things run in most public schools. Here in Miami teachers aren't even surprised when they tell one another that one of the students threatened to piss on their desk. Detention and suspension do jackshit to punish, and the only things you can go after are school trips, prom, or team sports. School trips in high population schools rarely happen and happen to come at student expense, not all bullies participate in athletics, so you've really only got the threat of prom, which is just a party the kid and his social circle can hold somewhere else.

And most importantly, the district needs to give a shit before any sort of punishments come in, which is often not the case due to the bureaucracy involved. They've got more important things than the psychological integrity of their underlings.

[Tiberius]

I'm pretty sure calling the cops is always an option. When I was in school a kid was escorted off the bus by cops because he refused to stop using profanity. That was 4 years ago. I'm not arguing that what happened didn't sucked I'm just saying that making her wealthy isn't warranted. If she had done her job properly she would not be wealthy now. She is being rewarded for being bad at her job no matter how much you contribute to her wealth won't change that. Kids don't just start talking like that. It takes a lot of letting people walk all over you for them to get that ballsy.

[Lucrece]

Calling the cops also backfire if the parents of those escorted kids happen to be able to afford lawyers and dirt campaigns against the schoolboard, in which often it is the person who instigated parent anger who ends up losing out.

There's a reason why teachers are afraid to touch confrontational topics like evolution (many of them forced to play agnostic or downplay the importance of the theory to the field) and topics like gay people in history or the feminist movement, much less positive talk of prominent atheist thinkers.

[Ghostbear]

Calling the cops doesn't do anything with rowdy kids on a bus. They tried that several times with my high school bus, and all it amounted to was the kids got chewed out once by an officer, then everybody assumed the problem was solved now, so there was no need to do anything about them ever again. Instead they just kept being shitheads, but now nobody in power would believe that the kids would be so disrespectful of authority to continue such after they had a police officer speak to them. Since she wasn't the bus driver, I doubt she even had the authority to call the police anyway. Not to mention how much all the delays that introduces pisses off the kids that aren't causing trouble -- it'll make them hate you for calling the cops.

There really wasn't anything plausible she could have done, and your argument of rewarding people for failing is stupid. Bill Gates got "rewarded" for dropping out of college -- sometimes a happy windfall happens to people, and this lady is far more deserving of such a lucky break than just about everyone else I see getting one.

[stevey_frac]

Calling the cops doesn't do anything with rowdy kids on a bus. They tried that several times with my high school bus, and all it amounted to was the kids got chewed out once by an officer, then everybody assumed the problem was solved now, so there was no need to do anything about them ever again. Instead they just kept being shitheads, but now nobody in power would believe that the kids would be so disrespectful of authority to continue such after they had a police officer speak to them. Since she wasn't the bus driver, I doubt she even had the authority to call the police anyway. Not to mention how much all the delays that introduces pisses off the kids that aren't causing trouble -- it'll make them hate you for calling the cops.

There really wasn't anything plausible she could have done, and your argument of rewarding people for failing is stupid. Bill Gates got "rewarded" for dropping out of college -- sometimes a happy windfall happens to people, and this lady is far more deserving of such a lucky break than just about everyone else I see getting one.

Bill Gates had already done thousands of hours of programming, quite possibly more then the people who would have taught in him when he dropped out. He was talented, incredibly lucky, and was presented with a series of awesome opportunities that he seized. He wasn't rewarded for dropping out of school. He was rewarded for being the right person, at the right time, and seizing the chance he was given.

Also:

I'm pretty sure calling the cops is always an option. When I was in school a kid was escorted off the bus by cops because he refused to stop using profanity. That was 4 years ago. I'm not arguing that what happened didn't sucked I'm just saying that making her wealthy isn't warranted. If she had done her job properly she would not be wealthy now. She is being rewarded for being bad at her job no matter how much you contribute to her wealth won't change that. Kids don't just start talking like that. It takes a lot of letting people walk all over you for them to get that ballsy.

$5 more from me! Once I find the donation link... I'm sure Google will help me with that.

[Ghostbear]

Bill Gates had already done thousands of hours of programming, quite possibly more then the people who would have taught in him when he dropped out. He was talented, incredibly lucky, and was presented with a series of awesome opportunities that he seized. He wasn't rewarded for dropping out of school. He was rewarded for being the right person, at the right time, and seizing the chance he was given.

Yeah, I didn't mean it in a literal sense, but the only reason he was the right person at the right time was because he dropped out. It was a smart decision on his behalf. Still, being the right person at the right time is still a bit of a lucky windfall -- by being talented you can make it more likely, but there's still luck involved. Maybe Gates wasn't the best example, but I still found the idea that this is a reward for failure, and that such things are nearly unheard of, as quite incredulous.

$5 more from me! Once I find the donation link... I'm sure Google will help me with that.

Here. "Contribute now" on the right.

[Ceron]

Can we just stop arguing with Tiberius now? Quite obviously there is nothing that a single person on the entire forums can say to sway him of his opinion.

[ShortChelsea]

When I clicked on this thread, knowing nothing of the story other than the thread title, I expected outrage over a ridiculous lawsuit settlement or something.

But really? She didn't take 500k out of the school district's budget, or sue the parents for their college funds or something. People donating their own money, by their own personal decisions, according to their own consciences, out of kindness and empathy? This is not something to be angry about. This is something we wish would happen more often.

And honestly, one person getting sorta-wealthy for a sorta-decent reason makes me a helluvalot less upset than all the people elsewhere and elsewhen who got and are getting incredibly wealthy for incredibly bad reasons.

Can the titled be changed? I think it's misleading.

[KnightExemplar]

Calling the cops doesn't do anything with rowdy kids on a bus. They tried that several times with my high school bus, and all it amounted to was the kids got chewed out once by an officer, then everybody assumed the problem was solved now, so there was no need to do anything about them ever again. Instead they just kept being shitheads, but now nobody in power would believe that the kids would be so disrespectful of authority to continue such after they had a police officer speak to them. Since she wasn't the bus driver, I doubt she even had the authority to call the police anyway. Not to mention how much all the delays that introduces pisses off the kids that aren't causing trouble -- it'll make them hate you for calling the cops.

Yeah... a friend of mine is in the Police Force. He's been called in to yell at kids in his short time in there already.

But when the big men with guns strapped on their belts leave the building, the kids just get rowdy again. All you're teaching them is to hate cops and/or do things when cops aren't around.

[TheGrammarBolshevik]

So if a cop was being bullied by criminals into letting them do whatever they want would they still be getting pats on the back and everyones sympathy?

Oh, jeez, I was going to make an analogy and you made it for me. A cop has a gun and a bunch of training in dealing with uncooperative and violent people. We expect them to be prepared for a certain level of shit. But if it goes beyond that level? Say a cop gets jumped by a squad from the local mob, and gets the shit beat out of him. Damn straight he's going to see a lot of sympathy from people. Not "for being bad at his job," but because dealing with gang ambushes ain't his job.

Likewise, this woman's job is not to resist determined, coordinated asshattery from little shits who managed to find a gap in the flimsy authority her employers gave her. So when she failed to do that thing that it is not her job to do, people here in the non-asshole world recognize that she should not be blamed.

Can the titled be changed? I think it's misleading.

How about "Bus driver given $35 because someone is wrong on the Internet"?

[Steax]

And then there's the retribution issue. If kids get detention at school for what they did on a bus, they'll only direct their hate at that one person. And so will their peers. Could she write them off for detention again? Maybe. Would it be a pleasant experience? No. I imagine for people in that position, just surviving it and keeping her job is her priority. She said it herself; she just wanted to hang on for another day, since it was the last day of school.

[Jave D]

I'm not arguing that what happened didn't sucked I'm just saying that making her wealthy isn't warranted.

Don't people have the right to donate money even if you think it's not warranted? What, are you trying to rob people of all agency?

If she had done her job properly she would not be wealthy now. She is being rewarded for being bad at her job no matter how much you contribute to her wealth won't change that.

You keep insisting that she just didn't do her job properly - because of this one incident of her "not being able to keep them in line." You're happily assuming an unreasonably high expectation of constant job perfection. It would be like saying that teachers who have more than one student who fail the class are bad at their jobs, since their job is to teach the material to students. All so you can make this rather oddly outraged emotive "she's being rewarded for being bad at her job!!!!!1" claim which, no matter how many times you repeat it, does not really qualify as a substantive argument. It's an interesting, somewhat right-winged spin on the story, I grant you, but that doesn't make it very compelling.

Kids don't just start talking like that. It takes a lot of letting people walk all over you for them to get that ballsy.

Like, on what do you base this comment on? Your personal hunches about child psychology? You're basically blaming her for them being bullies - isn't that 'robbing her of all agency?'

[TheGrammarBolshevik]

To be fair, I don't think Tiberius had a fucking clue what he meant when he used that phrase.

[lutzj]

How about "Bus driver given $35 because someone is wrong on the Internet"?

How about "Bus driver given $40 because someone is wrong on the Internet?"

[Tiberius]

I'm not blaiming her for them being bullies. I'm asserting that she has power over how she responds to her surroundings. You are insisting that she was powerless to do anything but sit there and cry. Just because that's what she did doesn't mean that's the only thing she could do.
Also, you can't use the fact that this kind of shit happened all the time on her bus to try to prove that she was powerless and then assert that it was a single isolated incident to try to prove that she was capable in her job. It's one or the other.

[Tiberius]

Don't people have the right to donate money even if you think it's not warranted? What, are you trying to rob people of all agency?

Oh ya that's right! I forgot. Disagreeing with something== trying to force everyone else to stop. What are you a republican?
Just so you know. You're no longer allowed to whistle, drink pepsi, and push crosswalk buttons.

[Princess Marzipan]

Quick, someone rig a crosswalk button to donate another $5 to this woman every time it's pressed!

[Tiberius]

Quick, someone rig a crosswalk button to donate another $5 to this woman every time it's pressed!

You realize i don't really care right?

[Steax]

I'm not blaiming her for them being bullies. I'm asserting that she has power over how she responds to her surroundings. You are insisting that she was powerless to do anything but sit there and cry. Just because that's what she did doesn't mean that's the only thing she could do.
Also, you can't use the fact that this kind of shit happened all the time on her bus to try to prove that she was powerless and then assert that it was a single isolated incident to try to prove that she was capable in her job. It's one or the other.

Many responses were made against your assertion. Care to back it up?

Spoiler:

Calling the cops also backfire if the parents of those escorted kids happen to be able to afford lawyers and dirt campaigns against the schoolboard, in which often it is the person who instigated parent anger who ends up losing out.

There's a reason why teachers are afraid to touch confrontational topics like evolution (many of them forced to play agnostic or downplay the importance of the theory to the field) and topics like gay people in history or the feminist movement, much less positive talk of prominent atheist thinkers.

Calling the cops doesn't do anything with rowdy kids on a bus. They tried that several times with my high school bus, and all it amounted to was the kids got chewed out once by an officer, then everybody assumed the problem was solved now, so there was no need to do anything about them ever again. Instead they just kept being shitheads, but now nobody in power would believe that the kids would be so disrespectful of authority to continue such after they had a police officer speak to them. Since she wasn't the bus driver, I doubt she even had the authority to call the police anyway. Not to mention how much all the delays that introduces pisses off the kids that aren't causing trouble -- it'll make them hate you for calling the cops.

Yeah... a friend of mine is in the Police Force. He's been called in to yell at kids in his short time in there already.

But when the big men with guns strapped on their belts leave the building, the kids just get rowdy again. All you're teaching them is to hate cops and/or do things when cops aren't around.

Oh, jeez, I was going to make an analogy and you made it for me. A cop has a gun and a bunch of training in dealing with uncooperative and violent people. We expect them to be prepared for a certain level of shit. But if it goes beyond that level? Say a cop gets jumped by a squad from the local mob, and gets the shit beat out of him. Damn straight he's going to see a lot of sympathy from people. Not "for being bad at his job," but because dealing with gang ambushes ain't his job.

Likewise, this woman's job is not to resist determined, coordinated asshattery from little shits who managed to find a gap in the flimsy authority her employers gave her. So when she failed to do that thing that it is not her job to do, people here in the non-asshole world recognize that she should not be blamed.

And then there's the retribution issue. If kids get detention at school for what they did on a bus, they'll only direct their hate at that one person. And so will their peers. Could she write them off for detention again? Maybe. Would it be a pleasant experience? No. I imagine for people in that position, just surviving it and keeping her job is her priority. She said it herself; she just wanted to hang on for another day, since it was the last day of school.

[Bears!]

Quick, someone rig a crosswalk button to donate another $5 to this woman every time it's pressed!

You realize i don't really care right?

Your apathy, particularly towards how others spend their money, has been so evident throughout this entire thread. [/sarcasm]

You really don't care, huh?

[Tiberius]

I'm not blaiming her for them being bullies. I'm asserting that she has power over how she responds to her surroundings. You are insisting that she was powerless to do anything but sit there and cry. Just because that's what she did doesn't mean that's the only thing she could do.
Also, you can't use the fact that this kind of shit happened all the time on her bus to try to prove that she was powerless and then assert that it was a single isolated incident to try to prove that she was capable in her job. It's one or the other.

Many responses were made against your assertion. Care to back it up?

Spoiler:

Calling the cops also backfire if the parents of those escorted kids happen to be able to afford lawyers and dirt campaigns against the schoolboard, in which often it is the person who instigated parent anger who ends up losing out.

There's a reason why teachers are afraid to touch confrontational topics like evolution (many of them forced to play agnostic or downplay the importance of the theory to the field) and topics like gay people in history or the feminist movement, much less positive talk of prominent atheist thinkers.

Calling the cops doesn't do anything with rowdy kids on a bus. They tried that several times with my high school bus, and all it amounted to was the kids got chewed out once by an officer, then everybody assumed the problem was solved now, so there was no need to do anything about them ever again. Instead they just kept being shitheads, but now nobody in power would believe that the kids would be so disrespectful of authority to continue such after they had a police officer speak to them. Since she wasn't the bus driver, I doubt she even had the authority to call the police anyway. Not to mention how much all the delays that introduces pisses off the kids that aren't causing trouble -- it'll make them hate you for calling the cops.

Yeah... a friend of mine is in the Police Force. He's been called in to yell at kids in his short time in there already.

But when the big men with guns strapped on their belts leave the building, the kids just get rowdy again. All you're teaching them is to hate cops and/or do things when cops aren't around.

Oh, jeez, I was going to make an analogy and you made it for me. A cop has a gun and a bunch of training in dealing with uncooperative and violent people. We expect them to be prepared for a certain level of shit. But if it goes beyond that level? Say a cop gets jumped by a squad from the local mob, and gets the shit beat out of him. Damn straight he's going to see a lot of sympathy from people. Not "for being bad at his job," but because dealing with gang ambushes ain't his job.

Likewise, this woman's job is not to resist determined, coordinated asshattery from little shits who managed to find a gap in the flimsy authority her employers gave her. So when she failed to do that thing that it is not her job to do, people here in the non-asshole world recognize that she should not be blamed.

And then there's the retribution issue. If kids get detention at school for what they did on a bus, they'll only direct their hate at that one person. And so will their peers. Could she write them off for detention again? Maybe. Would it be a pleasant experience? No. I imagine for people in that position, just surviving it and keeping her job is her priority. She said it herself; she just wanted to hang on for another day, since it was the last day of school.

Riding the bus is a privilege, not a right. It doesn't matter how pissy a twelve year old gets if he's not on the bus he's not a problem. Are you really so jaded to believe that a school employee is powerless to do anything about a student putting his hands on her.I really should have used my time in school to hit and abuse teachers because apparently everyone in the world is a weak and powerless victim incapable of controlling how they react to anything. And once again this is empirically denied once we look at the fact that every school in the fucking world is not some lord of the flies clusterfuck.

And no, I don't care how you as an individual spends their money. If i told you i dump out half of every box of cheerios I buy you would think it was unnecessary or stupid but you probably wouldn't care. I don't usually get butt-hurt over what people i don't know do or say that doesn't affect me.

[Princess Marzipan]

And no, I don't care how you as an individual spends their money. If i told you i dump out half of every box of cheerios I buy you would think it was unnecessary or stupid but you probably wouldn't care. I don't usually get butt-hurt over what people i don't know do or say that doesn't affect me.

You don't usually, but you made an apparent exception to create this thread.

[Tiberius]

]You don't usually, but you made an apparent exception to create this thread.

Because I never act or say anything unless butt-hurt. That maybe the only thing that spurs you to action but not me.

[iamspen]

Phrase people need to stop using #1: "butt-hurt."

[Ghostbear]

Phrase people need to stop using #1: "butt-hurt."

This, a thousand times this. Right now the only purpose it has is to reveal that the person using it has nothing worthwhile to say.

[KnightExemplar]

Riding the bus is a privilege, not a right. It doesn't matter how pissy a twelve year old gets if he's not on the bus he's not a problem. Are you really so jaded to believe that a school employee is powerless to do anything about a student putting his hands on her.I really should have used my time in school to hit and abuse teachers because apparently everyone in the world is a weak and powerless victim incapable of controlling how they react to anything. And once again this is empirically denied once we look at the fact that every school in the fucking world is not some lord of the flies clusterfuck.

I'm unsure if you've ever even seen how some of these spoiled brats work. They get kicked off the bus, then their parent files a major complaint and then they're back on the bus again. When parents are paying their hard earned tax money for an education system (including bus expenses), they expect their kids to be able to ride a bus. Take that away, and you've got to deal with some pissed off parents who are completely ignorant of their kid's behavior.

Plus, these events were apparently on the last day of school. So its not like they could have been punished IIRC. They aren't getting on a bus for a few months anyway...

[Tiberius]

Plus, these events were apparently on the last day of school. So its not like they could have been punished IIRC. They aren't getting on a bus for a few months anyway...

Once again i forgot that schools burn their permanent records at the end of every school year. Detention, suspension, and being kicked off the bus rollover to the next year. Getting back to the fact that somehow most of the rest of the educational system is able to create some semblance of order yet this women is uniquely powerless for some reason.

[KnightExemplar]

Plus, these events were apparently on the last day of school. So its not like they could have been punished IIRC. They aren't getting on a bus for a few months anyway...

Once again i forgot that schools burn their permanent records at the end of every school year. Detention, suspension, and being kicked off the bus rollover to the next year. Getting back to the fact that somehow most of the rest of the educational system is able to create some semblance of order yet this women is uniquely powerless for some reason.

Certainly not powerless. Just deserving of a vacation that I've proudly funded.

[Thesh]

Note that as someone who was once a teenager, I didn't give a shit about detention. Suspension meant more time to smoke pot. Saturday school was great for smoking pot. Walking home meant that I could smoke pot on the way home, which meant that even if my parents were home, I could still get high.

[Tiberius]

Note that as someone who was once a teenager, I didn't give a shit about detention. Suspension meant more time to smoke pot. Saturday school was great for smoking pot. Walking home meant that I could smoke pot on the way home, which meant that even if my parents were home, I could still get high.

Unless you hung out with and tormented your teachers with your free time then this is irrelevant.

Who spends what will be a million dollars on a vacation. Helping the less fortunate is great, but now you are probably the less fortunate.

[engr]

That said, there is a darker side to this story that I'd like to point out. The kids who bullied her are now getting 4Chan style epic harassment on them. The kids have had their names leaked to the internet and now the Police are monitoring their houses because of the insane level of death threats that anonymous people have placed on them.

Death threats? Not good. Epic harassment? Good. About time for them to get the taste of their own medicine.

As far as the lady on the bus... As someone who has been bullied, I feel bad for her, but if she can't even stand up for herself, she shouldn't be a bus monitor.

[Thesh]

Note that as someone who was once a teenager, I didn't give a shit about detention. Suspension meant more time to smoke pot. Saturday school was great for smoking pot. Walking home meant that I could smoke pot on the way home, which meant that even if my parents were home, I could still get high.

Unless you hung out with and tormented your teachers with your free time then this is irrelevant.

Who spends what will be a million dollars on a vacation. Helping the less fortunate is great, but now you are probably the less fortunate.

I'm fortunate to have a well paying job, she isn't and won't be (and now doesn't have to).

As far as the lady on the bus... As someone who has been bullied, I feel bad for her, but if she can't even stand up for herself, she shouldn't be a bus monitor.

And what would you do? What exactly can you say to a bully that will make them stop without sinking to their level?

[Tiberius]

And what would you do? What exactly can you say to a bully that will make them stop without sinking to their level?

"You're off the bus. See you never!"

[engr]

And what would you do? What exactly can you say to a bully that will make them stop without sinking to their level?

Sadly, it's mostly who you are, not what you say. Some people have that, I'm not sure how to describe it, general look of confidence, I guess, so people don't try to mess with them. And some can yell at kids all they want and the kids will just yell back.

[Thesh]

And what would you do? What exactly can you say to a bully that will make them stop without sinking to their level?

"You're off the bus. See you never!"

You're assuming she has that power. For many parents the entire reason they have their kids taking the bus instead of walking home is because they feel it is safer that way. If a bus monitor did kick students off the bus and a bunch of parents complained, the result would probably be the bus monitor getting fired. If one of the kids was injured on the way home, for whatever reason, after getting kicked off of the bus, the school would be facing litigation.