We shouldn’t and can’t apply those laws to children.
Bullying in children and in adults are two different things, and have to be treated differently.
For adults, they can be workforce penalties or felonies, which are appropriate since adults know what bullying is and the behavior falls under existing laws.
I know what you’re getting at, and frankly I think a few “assault” (really battery) cases could be swept aside especially when it’s just a “disagreement” that’s between 2 adults.
I do think schools should be paying better attention to what goes on, but with all this talk of “bullying” being all the rage (including our private school), there is still alot of misplaced justice. As people mentioned - zero tolerance can = “zero common sense”. Kids who are just REACTING to the truly bad kids often get the punishment, not the kids that deserve it. (It’s happening in our school, where a girl who came later to our school was physically hurting boys in the class, including the tough boys who generally don’t mind roughhousing and aren’t too sensitive; she’s just aggressive. Her folks get “talked to” but nothing really happens to the girl.)