That 'fantasy' is not ridiculous. Teachers are quite often (nearly always) in a financially precarious situation with management that doesn't support them and parents that abdicate all responsibility. All it takes is one spoiled kid with rich parents to manufacture a complaint (teacher stole my phone and broke it). That complaint could seriously derail their life. My wife taught for years even though I made enough that she didn't need to because she loved helping kids learn. She left the profession entirely because the death by a thousand cuts that is the American education system was giving her actual medical issues from the anxiety, at great detriment to the kids she would have helped.

We treat teachers like second class citizens at our own peril.

It's exceedingly overblown. I agree administration (not teachers) are the issue here, they are the ones who are terrified of the liability fairy and refuse to actually support anyone who is actually attempting education. They don't want to have to take a single risk and maybe have to either do some work or lose their cushy job. Much easier to do nothing and pretend they are terrified of having to deal with manufactured complaints. These school districts are large - they could trivially come up with a in-house legal defense team and strategy for a rounding error on their budget and kill these stupid things as a chilling effect.

I've watched it happen in real time. Administration terrified of totally nonsense complaints and pretending that they just can't take on the "liability" - most of which would be laughed out of court. Bury these people in legal bills if they want to bring such crazy to court. But there is no risk ever taken unless an administrator's career is the one on the line.

Phone breaks in the custody of a teacher and there is not actual evidence of that happening? Too bad. Sue us. No one is suing over a $800 phone unless it turns into a crusade. If the latter happens, put up the strongest legal defense possible and make sure anyone watching understands they are not an easy target for such things. Don't want your phone to "break" while in custody of the school? Easy. Don't bring it to school and violate school policy.

If there were a competent administrator they'd be having parents sign release forms at the start of the school year for the topic. First offense confiscation for the day. Second you get it back on Friday. Third at the end of the school year.

I don't disagree that we treat teachers like shit. They are the equivalent of a retail employee being put in the front line and forced to deal with customer's vitriol due to horrible corporate policies set by do-nothing executives making 20x what they are. I put nearly all the blame on incompetent and downright corrupt administration enabled by equally deeply unserious politicians.