Ok, except you're forgetting the CTO who doesn't believe in testing and will yell at the tech lead for wasting time writing them. And the CFO who won't approve

Ok, except you're forgetting the CTO who doesn't believe in testing and will yell at the tech lead for wasting time writing them. And the CFO who won't approve budget for a CI system. And the CEO who just wants the feature pushed so he can sell it to clients whether or not it works. The system is broken and in cases like these the school is put in an impossible situation. And remember this isn't just one kid they're trying to deal with: it's more than half of the student body. So the tech lead probably has dozens of junior devs constantly pushing code that he has to deal with. You're probably right: the tech lead makes a nice scapegoat when a news article gets published that riles everyone up. Firing him won't solve the problem though.