The point is that the teacher should know where her charges are at all times — and she obviously didn’t in this case.
Well then, fine. We don't know from this article how many children she had in the class. Does the fact that she didn't realize that two out of ? weren't sitting before her at story-time [or whatever] justify suspension?
I think this is an example of the impossible expectations our socialist educational (and I use that word lightly) system places on teachers.
In our day we all sat in desks in a row in our classroom. Not so today. I volunteer in my kids’ school. There are not only tables and chairs but stations with educational activities. The children have ‘expectations, and they rotate in an orderly way and are ‘expected’ to complete each activity each week. The result is a lot of moving around, back and forth from station to station. The children are not fixed at one desk, as we were, and the teacher supervises as she goes from group to group. These teachers are amazing. I’ve never seen a class out of order, just dynamic activity.