<p>Doesn’t 9% go to the host website, 50% to taxes, and more to handle expenses acrued by the auction? There won’t be all that much left.</p>
<p>I think it is 4% for the host website and then a 3% credit card fee. Taxation is unclear, but even assuming 50% taxation, she would clear over $300,000. For a bus monitor making a $15,000 annual income, this is 20 years of income.</p>
<p>It warms my heart that she can retire and not have to suffer through any more days of riding the bus.</p>
<p>Everyday I check the latest YouTube comments on the video. Almost every comment is a death threat or reveals the kids’ phone numbers.</p>
<p>[Bus</a> Bullies Who Tormented Bus Aide Karen Klein Suspended From School For For A Year CBS New York](<a href=“http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2012/06/29/students-that-bullied-bus-monitor-karen-klein-suspended-for-one-year/]Bus”>Students That Bullied Upstate Bus Monitor Karen Klein Suspended For 1 Year - CBS New York)</p>
<p>The 4 students are suspended from the middle school and riding the bus for one year. They will be housed in an alternative school since by law the state is obligated to teach them. They have a community service requirement and must work with senior citizens. Punishment seems to “fit the crime.”</p>
<p>I believe they checked into it with lawyers and found that taxes don’t have to be paid because all of the individual gifts are less then x amount each - it’s like having 10 thousand friends gift you 50 dollars for christmas.</p>
<p>Things don’t change much. I went to Athena for junior and senior high school back in the 70s. Quite often I walked the three miles home during junior high because one of the neighbors would threaten to beat me up at the bus stop, and another girl would manage to sit behind me and pull the hairs out of my head one by one.</p>
<p>I feel so sorry for Ms. Klein and I am glad she will have the financial wherewithal not to need to return to her job. I also feel sorry for the children on that bus and in that school because it obviously has a “Lord of the Flies” environment. It’s a sad commentary that there was need of a monitor on the bus to prevent bullying. </p>
<p>Other than the fact that this whole incident and scenario is so disturbing, the other idea that keeps bothering me is that Ms.Klein was hired with the purpose of extinguishing the very behavior that was directed at her. It bothers me that she did not stand up right when the behavior started that day, and assert her authority. It bothers me that this might have happened other times on the bus, and that this was just the worst and most egregious (and publicized) occasion. It bothers me to think that this might have been an ongoing situation on that bus, and not directed just at Ms. Klein, but at the students she had been hired to protect from this kind of behavior…and did she do anything about it?</p>
<p>^ that was my thought…while I feel for her for being bullied, how was she capable of standing up to kids bullying kids? it was her job after all. and I don’t see the need for her to receive that much money for this incident. so many kids withstand much much worse, on an ongoing basis. she should share the money with others, or donate a percentage to a bullying program. </p>
<p>glad the kids are being disciplined appropriately.</p>
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<p>Did the kids know that’s what they might get for what they did if caught? Klein could remind them of that if so.</p>
<p>To continue the thought I had started above, but I realize wasn’t too complete, I just have this sad feeling that this was not the first or only time this happened on this bus, with behavior directed both at other students and at Ms. Klein as well…and what, if anything, did Ms. Klein do about it on those occasions? </p>
<p>This behavior was the reason she was on the bus as a monitor…she was the adult on the bus whose job it was to supervise and maintain discipline…and I just have this mental vision of the bullying students and their mean behavior terrorizing the other kids on the bus, and Ms. Klein as well, and Ms. Klein just cowering ineffectively in her seat, and the bullies just gaining more and more confidence and power…</p>
<p>And this is where I start feeling less sympathetic toward Ms. Klein</p>
<p>I heard that she said that it would be a waste of time to write them up since it was the end of the school year and the admins would do nothing so late in the year.</p>
<p>The lack of follow through on the part of admins at sis’s school - whether it is dress code, behavior, etc. Is a persistent problem, and eventually many of the teachers simply let things go that with support might be punished. What would you have her do that would not be attacked as bullying on her part?</p>