About "No Bully Bus"

The Southwest Transportation Agency, which buses your child to and from school every day, is introducing a new program designed to make each of its school buses a NoBullyBus!

Bullying is when a more powerful person (or persons) mistreats someone over-and-over on purpose. It is not hurting someone, accidentally. Examples of bullying are hitting, pushing, tripping, shoving someone into his or her locker, name-calling, teasing, making fun of someone because of looks or skin color or dress, rejecting someone, spreading rumors and lies about someone, writing mean notes, turning others against someone, threatening someone, embarrassing someone, stealing or damaging things that belong to someone, and so on.

The program begins with a scientifcally-sound survey of parents and their children who ride a Southwest Transportation bus. Parents and students are asked to identify a variety of bullying activities that students may have encountered in the past while riding a Southwest Transportation school bus; it also asks you to identify such experiences while children are in school. Be certain to complete and return the survey; it can be accessed through the internet at www.nobullybus.org (then click on NoBullyBus Survey), or we’ll happily send you a copy in the mail in either English or Spanish.

The survey has been tailored to each of three levels of public education: (i) Kindergarten to Grade 3; (ii) Elementary school, Grades 4 to 6, and (iii) Middle and High school, grades 7 to 12.

Feedback from this survey will be analyzed to identify trends and patterns with respect to types of bullying behavior that take place on the bus, as well as in the classroom; further, this “intelligence” will be used to identify which bus routes have more or less bullying activity on the bus.

Should an incident occur, the child or the parent will be able to immediately report it to Southwest Transportation by visiting a website at www.nobullybus.org and filling out an incident report form. Each child can choose to identify himself/herself or to remain anonymous.

If a family does NOT have access to a computer at home, there will be computers at each school that will have a link to www.nobullybus.org, which will be identified by the nobullybus logo.

Southwest bus drivers are undergoing intense training to learn how to interact with students in a fashion that will ward off bullying behavior, wherever possible; and deal with such behavior in a positive and constructive fashion when it does occur. School bus drivers will also use www.nobullybus.org to report a bullying incident on his or her route.

Should a serious incident take place on a Southwest bus, as in the past, the incident will be handled in a timely and appropriate fashion.

In addition, trained experts (including scientists) will conduct comparative analysis between feedback received from students and bus drivers to make certain that perceptions of bullying activities on their bus are consistent. For example, a given bus driver may be operating under the assumption that there is NO major bullying activities taking place on his/her bus, while student riders perceive that bullying is problematic. Or, vice versa. Most buses have video monitor devices (MVD) on the bus, so that the analysis can be validated, when needed. To learn more, or to provide feedback to Southwest Transportation, visit us at www.nobullybus.org.

You don’t need to remember our web address, just write it down when you drop your child off at the bus stop or pick your child up; you will see our web address on the back of all Southwest Transportation buses.