How did they punish the child? Am I missing something. I haven't read anything about that.
If you mean the one week it took them to recognized that there was a problem, then yeah, I agree. Maybe the principal was a bit slow to take action. But one week is hardly an unreasonable amount of time for the school to investigate and take action on something like that. IMHO. Especially since the case was kind of complicated. They can hardly fire a teacher instantly the minute one single student makes an accusation against a teacher with a 100% clean record.
Of course that problem was solved when the teacher forced them to take additional action, with his insubordination. That action was taken immediately, with no delay.