When a video of a bullied bus monitor went viral earlier this year, Max Sidorov decided to start a charity campaign to send the woman on a nice vacation. Well, Karen Klein can spend the rest of her life on vacation now that she’s received a $703,833 check.

The Edmonton Journal reports that Sidorov started a campaign on Indiegogo with the initial goal of raising $5000 for the bullied bus monitor. A spokesman for the site said that Sidorov surpassed his goal within hours, and, after two days, he had raised $500,000. Sidorov said that the fund received donations from more than 30,000 people from 84 different counties.

CBS reports that Klein has retired from her $15,506 salary job at Athena Middle School and plans on starting a bullying foundation.

Klein said:

“It’s hard to believe that people donated like that. I paid my car, I paid my house off.”

Radar Online reports that Klein is planning on using $100,000 to start an anti-bullying foundation. She will also donate some money to special needs charities. Oh, and she’s also going to go on a real long vacation.

Here’s a video of the bullied bus monitor receiving her $700,000 check.

The fundraising effort was started after a cellphone video of Karen Klein getting harassed on a school bus went viral. On the video, a group of young boys are heard calling Klein names and saying terrible things like her family had committed suicide because they didn’t want to talk to her.

Are you happy for Karen Klein? Are you glad that she’s using the money to fight bullying?

Bullied Bus Monitor Collects $703,833 Check is a post from: The Inquisitr

The bullied bus monitor video became a huge internet outrage sensation last month after a clip of Karen Klein, an elderly woman from Upstate New York, spread around the web due to the horrible verbal bullying it showed her peacefully enduring at the hands of a gaggle of teen boys on a school bus.

The bullied bus monitor clip was titled “Making the Bus Monitor Cry,” and the original video has garnered more than 8.3 million views on YouTube.

While the bullied bus monitor video initially was a very sad thing for the internet to behold, some very good things came of it for the bullied bus monitor herself — the internet opened up their digital wallets and took up a vacation collection for the quietly abused old lady. By late last month, the “vacation of a lifetime” kitty had grown to $650,000, an outpouring of kindness that Klein and many others found moving and surprising.

Klein had been making very little in her clearly thankless job, and the internet was proud of itself for giving the older woman — who had endured tragedy in the years leading up to her viral fame — a little bit of money to retire on after her bad luck was publicized. And now that donations have closed up, another $50,000 has been added to the fund, closing it out at a respectable $700,000+.

According to ABC, organizer Max Sidorov of Toronto said that he was blown away by the fundraising’s success, being as he only intended to raise $5,000 for the bullied bus monitor’s vacation fund:

“I think that people just love rallying around a great cause, especially helping someone in need or who has been abused or can’t stand up for themselves,” Sidorov said by phone from Toronto on Friday. “It just shows there are so many great people in the world. It warms my heart to see that.”

The bullied bus monitor herself was not available to comment to press Friday, but one can only assume that the otherwise disappointing incident wound up being a boon for her — and that she no longer has to sit quietly while bratty teen boys give her the business.

Bullied Bus Monitor Campaign Nets $700K For Woman Who Verbally Abused in Shocking YouTube Video is a post from: The Inquisitr

The video of an upstate New York bus monitor being bullied that has thus far raised more than half a million dollars for the woman who was subject to some middle school bullying on a school bus has been viewed millions of times on YouTube, and one type of comment keeps coming up over and over.

Technically, it’s not just the bus monitor being bullied that seems to prompt remarks about “kids these days” and how disrespectful toward authority or adults in general they seem to be. If you’re a parent yourself, you have probably experienced someone telling you basically daily that the answer to “kids these days” is to smack them, and the lack of kid-smacking is why we’ve got these middle school tyrants running about the place, making bus monitors cry.

And indeed, watching the bus monitor get bullied does kind of make anyone probably over the age of 25 wonder what the hell has gotten into kids, and why they’re not afraid of adults — even the adults who should probably be appointed to stick up for a bullied bus monitor.

But experts say in recent years, cyberbullying and generally more lax parenting and schooling parameters have made for a generation of kids who are sort of fine with this whole thing. Ken Trump is president of the National School Safety and Security Services, a Cleveland-based consulting firm, and he spoke about what the video indicates in a recent interview.

Trump explains that a lot of adult authority has been eroded, and the AP article states that 8% of secondary school teachers report having been physically threatened by a student — an even more serious matter than the bullied bus monitor:

“Is what we saw in this video occurring with many children every day with adults? No… One incident is one too many, but we certainly have a problem where the authority of educators and school support personnel has been undermined.”

Do you think the bullied bus monitor video is indicative of how authority among adults has been undermined in school and at home for many kids?

Bus Monitor Bullied, Experts Say Situation is Part of a Growing Erosion of Grown-Up Authority is a post from: The Inquisitr

Karen Klein, the bullied bus monitor who received national attention this week after a video surfaced online, said today that she did not accept her verbal attacker’s apology.

Klein said:

“I think they can do better.”

Klein was verbally harassed by a group of middle school boys in New York. When the video surfaced online last week, Klein received an outpouring of support (more than $500,000 has been raised on her behalf) and sparked anger throughout the country.

The some of the boys apologized to the bullied bus monitor earlier this week. One of the boys said:

“I am so sorry for the way I treated you. When I saw the video I was disgusted and could not believe I did that.”

Another added:

“I wish I had never done those things… If that had happened to someone in my family, like my mother or grandmother, I would be really mad at the people who did that to them.”

But apparently Klein wants more. According to TMZ, Klein isn’t ready to forgive the boys yet. She is, however, amazed by the outpouring of support she’s received and said that she’s already thinking of ways to spend the money she’s received.

ABC reports that the boys involved with the incident have been receiving death threats since the video went viral.

Robert Helms, father of one of the 13-year-old boys who harassed Klein, said:

“You’ve got to remember. He’s a thirteen-year-old kid. It was a stupid mistake and he’s paying for it.”

What do you think about Karen Klein? Are you surprised that the bullied bus monitor story has gathered so much (money) attention? Do you think she should forgive the boys that have apologized to her?

You can see the video of the incident here.

Bullied Bus Monitor Karen Klein Doesn’t Accept Apology is a post from: The Inquisitr

Karen Klein became an unwitting web star this week when a video of a very painful moment in her life — titled “Making the Bus Monitor Cry,” which garnered nearly 4 million views on YouTube — went massively viral.

If you’ve been following the Karen Klein story on the internet, you probably already know that the sad incident has a surprisingly happy ending. Reactions to the video across the mean, mean web were nearly unanimously supportive, and as we’ve seen in recent years, when the web opens its heart, it also opens its wallet.

Yes, since Karen Klein’s sad tale hit the web and began cutting onions in homes across America and the globe, an indiegogo campaign to send the bullied bus monitor on the vacation of a lifetime has blown up as well — raising more than $400,000 for Klein since its inception a scant few days ago.

But Karen Klein never asked for a vacation — the elderly widow simply wanted an apology from the boys that made her cry in a ten-minute long torrent of abuse. And she got an apology from two of the boys, identified only by their first names, Josh and Wesley — but now the boys are getting death threats for their role in the viral incident.

In a statement, Josh said of his treatment of Karen Klein:

“I am so sorry for the way I treated you. When I saw the video I was disgusted and could not believe I did that.”

Wesley said:

“I wish I had never done those things… If that had happened to someone in my family, like my mother or grandmother, I would be really mad at the people who did that to them.”

One of the boy’s fathers, Robert Helm, told Karen Klein:

“There’s no excuse. And we’re going to get to the bottom of that, but it really broke my heart and I shed a lot of tears thinking about that whole thing and I just want you to know that my family, all of us, are deeply saddened by this whole thing and we’re going to get it right.”

Despite the very public drama Klein has been thrust into, however, the bus monitor still spared concern for the boys’ families — when talking to Helm about the fallout, including death threats, she asked him, “…but you’ll be OK, right?”

Bus Monitor Karen Klein’s Bullies Now Getting Death Threats After Apologizing is a post from: The Inquisitr

Karen Klein, a New York grandmother of eight was taunted so badly by students on a school bus she was monitoring that it drove her to tears. One of the students on the bus captured the 10-minute taunting on video and now she’s $166,000 richer.

Originally uploaded to Facebook and then YouTube the video has received more than 1.65 million views in the last 24 hours.

After many people began witnessing the video an online fundraising effort(click link for the fundraising page) was started to send Karen Klein on a much deserved vacation, an effort that so far has raised 166,514.

Talking to the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle about the bullying incident Klein had stated:

“I was trying to just ignore them, hoping they would go away and it doesn’t work. Trust me, they didn’t go away.”

A second video was eventually discovered and the school district opened an active investigation to determine which kids were bullying Karen Klein.

Despite everything that has happened the victim insists “the kids weren’t always that bad” which explains why she didn’t personally report the incident. In fact nothing would have likely happened had the video not went viral on Wednesday and police were brought in to question kids on the bus.

Klein who is hearing impaired did not hear all the taunts that were captured on video. The grandmother makes $15,506 per year and is now considering taking her whole Family on a Disney Cruise.

The campaign for her vacation was started by a 25-year-old Reddit activist who said of the effort so far: “Maybe she could retire on this.”

Check out the first link in this post if you want to donate and help Karen Klein retire from her bullying work conditions.

In the meantime here’s the first bullying video that was uploaded to YouTube and eventually attracted millions of viewers:

UPDATE #1: The donations page has now raised more than $200,000!

UPDATE #2: The donations page has now raised more than $307,000!

UPDATE #3: The donations page has now raised more than $630,000!

Web Donors Give Bullied School Bus Monitor $166,000 After Video Goes Viral is a post from: The Inquisitr