the second you turn your back they are saying or doing something super fucked up

This is you admitting that 1. You know they engage in bullying when they are unsupervised, 2. Bullies apparently need 1-1.

You don’t have to defend the school at all. School staff typically does their best but the school board doesn’t hire or pay enough. You are probably correct that in every case of bullies they have a lack of support outside of school, that still doesn’t excuse the school for not doing what they know will prevent bullying. Maybe it’s impractical to hire more teachers but that’s all they have to do.

Of course I see why you’d defend the school, you worked there. So why were your hands tied?