The teacher who went to the Hollywood Reporter with gossip about White House aide Stephen Miller as a third-grader has been suspended by the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District.

That's good news.

Teacher Nikki Fiske has been placed on “home assignment,” where she will remain until district officials make a final decision regarding how best to discipline her (if at all). A spokesperson, Gail Pinsker, told the Los Angeles Times that school officials were concerned “about her release of student information, including allegations that the release may not have complied with applicable laws and district policies.”

“This has been picked up by other digital publications and blogs, and some issues have been raised,” Pinsker added.

My best guess is that Fiske will get off with a warning. That's probably enough. The punishment here shouldn’t be any harsher than it has to be. But she should apologize.

I’m just pleased to see the district at least takes the matter seriously enough to put her on “home assignment.” Don't get me wrong: I think what Fiske did was supremely lousy (I’ve said as much already). I guess my expectations are so low in this era of hyper-partisan clownery that I’m just happy to see that Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District officials are inclined to agree that Fiske got way out of line. Baby steps.

Fiske, whom the L.A. Times identifies as a registered Democrat, told the Hollywood Reporter that the Miller she knew was “a strange dude.” “I remember he would take a bottle of glue — we didn't have glue sticks in those days — and he would pour the glue on his arm, let it dry, peel it off and then eat it,” she added. “I remember being concerned about him — not academically. He was OK with that, though I could never read his handwriting. But he had such strange personal habits. He was a loner and isolated and off by himself all the time.”

Her on-the-record remarks are especially petty when you take a step back and realize she's dishing on an 8-year-old child who had been entrusted to her care. Fiske isn’t commenting on the 33-year-old Miller who works for the president — that would be perfectly appropriate. She isn’t saying anything about Miller the adult. All Fiske brings to the table here are her recollections of a child, whom she labels “strange” and “messy.”

I’m glad the school district suspended her. I’m glad this isn’t a thing we’re all going to just agree is OK and normal. Because there’s something fundamentally gross about a third-grade teacher saving up gossip about her students for later use.

Thank God that the vast majority of us were spared the indignity of having a jerk like Fiske for a teacher.

Personally, I didn’t like most of my teachers. I think I liked maybe two or three, tops, all the way up through college. I argued. I sulked. I routinely got into trouble. Some of my teachers were even genuinely terrible! But I feel pretty confident when I say that none of them would do to me what Fiske did to Miller, who is arguably the least sympathetic member of the Trump administration. None of them would attempt to humiliate me on a national stage with anecdotes from the very earliest days of my childhood formation.

For that, I’m grateful. If you can say the same, you should be, too.