WTF??? My kids don't go to public school, but about a year ago some random kid at a softball game started kicking my two year old daughter. (They were with grandma at the time) I told my older kids that if anything like that ever happened again, they all needed to jump on him clawing and biting and I would make sure they didn't get into any trouble. Some kids are like animals and there's no reason to just sit there and take it.
My daughter has speech problems, and didn’t talk until she was 5.
She had a kid bugging her at McDonald’s when she was 3. She kept on telling him “No”, and putting her hand up, but he kept on bugging her.
I just told him that she was telling him to stop bugging her, and then I warned him that if he kept on bugging her that she would probably bite or hit him, and I would do nothing about it.
He did stop, but I knew my daughter would defend herself if she needed to (she still known to bite and hit her brother and sister when they bug her).
I couldn't make that promise, but I taught my kids two rules: (1) If they are being bullied or see someone else being bullied and fight back, they will probably get in trouble. (2) If they are being bullied or see someone else being bullied and do not fight back, they will be in even more trouble (with me) than if they did the right thing. Surprisingly, my kids never got in trouble. They have stopped bullies several times by walking up to them, unafraid, and saying 'no'. They expect to get hurt if they fight, but they see that as less to be feared than the shame of allowing someone else to be bullied. I've never even heard a report of successful bullying in front of my kids. As for the "zeo tolerance" nonsense where everyone who fights gets in trouble, we have ourselves to blame for allowing lawyers to get away with their stunts when schools apply common sense 'unequally' to the kid who accidentally tripped another kid and to the kid who hit a classmate with brass knuckles.