NEW YORK — The upstate New York school bus monitor who was bullied by four seventh-graders says she is satisfied that they are being suspended for a year.
Speaking one day after the boys’ punishment was announced, Karen Klein said Saturday she wants to meet with the boys who tormented her.
“Oh yes, I would like to talk to them!” said the 68-year-old, speaking from her home in Rochester. “I want to ask them why they did it.”
What the four boys did was captured on video and posted online, mercilessly taunting Klein as she sat on the bus, gradually breaking down in tears.
On Friday, the school system in the Rochester suburb of Greece suspended the four middle school students for a year, keeping them from regular bus transportation.
How does Klein feel about this punishment? “It’s fine with me,” she said.
Klein said they’ll still be going to an alternative school — “They won’t be just sitting at home doing nothing.”
But the best part of her ordeal going viral online, and the resulting school action, “is that they have to do community service — for senior citizens,” she said, her voice rising with emotion.
“I’m so glad everyone out there knows about this,” she added, sounding upbeat as she spoke to The Associated Press minutes after returning from Boston and a four-day vacation that followed the flurry of attention raining on her from across the country.
