What do you think can or should be done in schools to effectively combat bullying?

I ask this as my daughter is about to enter kindergarten in a few months. I know that children of kindergarten age don’t usually get involved in serious bullying, the kind that causes teens to commit suicide. I am just thinking about how I hope her school years will be pleasant for her as she grows up. The school district I live in is a very nice one, but bullying takes place in good schools as well as bad. It might be worse in a nice area, maybe for kids that don’t have the best designer clothes, or the latest phones.

When I think about kids that are victims of bullying to the point where they can’t bear it and they commit suicide, often they are kids that look no different from any other kid. The girl that was from Ireland who killed herself was a very pretty girl. She’s just one I can think of offhand. She was pretty, and she was not heavy.

I was talking to a friend of mine about it last night. He said he thinks the key is for kids to be secure enough that they feel comfortable reporting any bullying they experience. I agree, but I also know that another kind of bullying is exclusionary. You can watch kids and make sure they don’t call each other names or make fun of each other, but you can’t make kids say hello to each other, or make them include someone in their activities. Girls have a reputation for being very mean to each other. I know a tactic that girls sometimes use is to exclude a girl from the group, so she feels like an outcast.

What do you think can or should be done in schools to effectively combat bullying?