Teacher accidentally breaks kid's phone, offers to pay for it, gets reported.

Last week Friday my son (10) got his phone confiscated at school. He was mucking around with it during class and the school rules are clear about phone usage during class without permission so I totally understood. The normal protocol is that the phone would go to the office where it would be returned to the student at the end of the day or the next day.

His teacher however apparently forgot to stop by the office before going home after school so she accidentally took it home with her and through some negligence, the phone broke in the hands of her toddler. Admittedly she was very upfront about it and even came to our house personally to tell us what happened and apologise which I respect.

She suggested the repayment plan for the phone and offered an old phone of hers for him in the meantime but it was essentially a brick with a screen. After she left I sent an email to the school about everything simply because I think it something the school should also be involved in since she's a teacher and easily took home a confiscated device albeit by mistake.

Received a response Monday morning apologising for what happened and promising to address the issue.

So my SIL works at the high school but smokes with the teachers at the junior school which is where she bumped into this teacher who was pissed and said that we were being assholes reporting it since she already promised to pay for the phone, offered an alternative and is a good teacher so we're messing with her career unnecessarily. So yeah, am I the asshole?

Q, A, & C:

LongtimeLHVLurker asks?

YTA. Are you hoping to get her fired for an honest mistake? Why does a 10 year old need a phone at school ?

SWDinTheWild OP says:

I need to be able to keep direct contact with him as his parent who travels during the day and he needs to be able to contact me and whoever who'll be fetching and looking after him.

_mmiggs_ says:

The 'repayment plan' isn't really an adequate offer. This teacher confiscated your son's phone at school (there's no need for a 10 year old to have a phone at school!), took it home by mistake (not what should have happened, but not really a big deal), but then allowed her toddler access to her stuff, and her kid broke the phone.

She owes you a new phone. Not the promise of a phone on a repayment plan - a phone now. Your kid should have a new phone in his hands in a few days. Anything less than that is unacceptable.

If I've misunderstood what you're saying, and your kid is getting a new phone in his hands in a few days, then you're the AH. ESH

SWDinTheWild OP says:

The timeline for the repayment is 2 months but he will still be getting a new phone next week out of my pocket.

He needs a phone because I travel a lot so it's nice to be able to have direct contact with him for any problems, and he can use it to call his grandmother or the babysitter when he needs to be picked up etc.

Ok_Job_9417 says:

NTA - taking the home accidentally could be understood to a degree. There’s zero reasons why it should have been within her toddler’s reach.