Hello, friends,

Quick backstory: my daughter has a friend who has been being bullied by two other girls at school. A week or so ago, one of them threatened to cut this girl with something she had in her lunchbox. This is 8th grade, btw.

The girl wrote a note to the principal, which I confirmed with him in an email. My daughter had told me about it and I wanted to make sure that her friend had actually delivered the note and not just told my daughter she had so my daughter wouldn't worry.

This morning, as I dropped off my daughter, I saw the two bully girls in front of the school. My daughter gets out of the car and has to walk past them to get to the front steps. I watched. She ignored them as best as I could tell (her back was to me), and the one ignored her, but the leader one, the mean one, literally snarled at my daughter as she walked past. I don't think my daughter saw this because the girl waited until she was past her to actually snarl, but I saw her and she did it, and then she noticed me watching her -- I was still in my car at the curb about fifteen feet away. I had my sunglasses on, but I'm sure she knew I saw her because she had a brief flash of "uh-oh" on her face, and then she made a smirky fake smile and continued talking to the other bully girl, whom I don't think even realized anything had gone on because she was talking in kind of an animated way with her hands and such.

What would you do? This girl has threatened another student (and I believe the principal has had them in his office for a discussion, maybe a warning -- I didn't follow up). She has been bullying my daughter's friend for a long time now, since last year, and my daughter has always stood by her friend and has told me that she's walked up on conversations between these girls where the bullies were provoking her friend and her just walking up and saying "What's going on?" will make them stop. She has told me that next time she sees that happening, she's going to be more direct and actually tell them to stop bullying her friend.

Maybe she's done this and hasn't told me. Maybe these girls heard she was the one who encouraged her friend to tell the principal about them. They've physically hit the girl and when I told my daughter I was concerned they'd get physical with her, too, she told me not to worry, that she knows how to disable them without hurting them. She's had seven years of martial arts and earned her black belt a year ago.

Do I tell the principle what I saw? If I don't and these bully girls do something really mean to my daughter's friend or my daughter because the principal thinks it's all handled...please advise me, those of you with more experience than I.

Fighting in school is automatic expulsion. I think for both parties, but I'm not sure.

Thanks,
Roxy