When I was in 4th grade my parents had us kids change schools. We went from public to Catholic. The switch entitled us to use the bus because of distance. After several weeks of riding the bus to and from school, both my brother and myself chose to walk the 1.5 miles to school.
The kids on the bus were the meanest SOBs I can ever remember from childhood. The bus driver was a wimp and never controlled the mayhem! It was so bad that one day, the last day, when we got up to get off at our stop all the other kids told the driver to keep going. It was the wrong stop. The driver believed them over us and kept going!
And these were Catholic school kids!
The Baptist school kids weren't much better when I was growing up. I remember begging my mother to please, please, please write a check for a week's worth of lunch money so that it couldn't be taken from me day by day. Checks are a bit harder for 10/12 year olds to negotiate. She didn't want to write a check for so little. I was ashamed to tell her what was going on because I had asked to go to that school.
This is not the forum for it, but getting roughed up for my 75 cents every day was nothing compared to what the teachers did.