![]() ![]() HB 439 would have no impact on private schools like Alpha Learning Academy. ![]() The statement also noted that Florida law allows for the practice “within the scope of parental expectations.”įurther, “while the senior leader’s act of administering corporal punishment is not in question, the State cannot prove there was an intent to inflict physical injury or bodily harm to the children,” the statement said. However, a statement from Bain’s office said it’s unclear whether the school leader - who admitted to the spankings - was aware of the handbook revision. The school, which had long allowed corporal punishment, had more recently prohibited it in the school handbook. In Orange County, the latest debate over corporal punishment was sparked after Bain announced no charges will be filed against an unnamed “senior leader” of Alpha Learning Academy, the Orlando-based Christian school. “All it (currently) gives parents is the right to ask for an explanation for the corporal punishment, so there are deficiencies here.”īernstein said many Florida school districts that allow corporal punishment do have rules in place requiring parental consent, but HB 439 would codify them into law. “All of this stems from a lack of a requirement of parental consent in state law,” Bernstein said. Most recently, the parents of a high schooler in Liberty County called out the school district after they were not notified before their child was paddled last December. In many Florida school districts, however, the controversy surrounding its existence persists. In school year 2014-2015, schools there reported fewer than 10 students receiving corporal punishment before a proposal to abandon the practice altogether was adopted by the school board. The rules HB 439 sought to impose mirror the limitations that were in place at Lake County Public Schools more than a decade ago. “(Schools) got the leeway to do what they wanted, and they did it improperly. “State law says ‘reasonable force’ for school corporal punishment, and look what they did with it - they hit disabled kids disproportionately,” Graham Bernstein, director of political affairs at UF’s chapter of the Florida Student Policy Forum, told the Sentinel. In many counties, some students face corporal punishment more than once, and the punishment is disproportionately doled out against students with disabilities, which this year’s legislative effort seeks to address. The most recent school year saw only 509 students facing the punishment, as many of the state’s 67 public school districts - including those in Orange, Seminole, Osceola and Lake - have abandoned the practice altogether, while the 19 remaining holdouts use it far less than in previous years, including one that didn’t report any this past year.īut detailed data collected by a group of University of Florida students, which helped inform HB 439, shows even deeper disparities. The rest prohibit it.ĭata collected by the Florida Department of Education and reviewed by the Orlando Sentinel shows corporal punishment statewide has gone down every school year since 2012-2013, when school districts reported using it on 2,757 students. That bill would prohibit corporal punishment against students with disabilities, and require parents to buy into the practice before it’s used on their children.įlorida law defines allowable corporal punishment as the “moderate use of physical force or physical contact … as may be necessary to maintain discipline or to enforce school rule.”įourteen other states, mostly in the South, also allow such punishment by law, while three states don’t expressly condone or outlaw the practice. Katherine Waldron, D-Palm Beach, who explored the issue before introducing House Bill 439 this year. “I had the same reaction a lot of people had, which is that I assumed it had already been banned,” said Rep. ![]()
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