Texas school re-thinks rule, sort of, after spanking of teen girl

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On Monday night, officials at one Texas high school are meeting to discuss changing a rule that would allow male administrators to spank female students.

That’s right, spank. Nineteen states reportedly allow corporal punishment in schools, according to the Center for Effective Discipline, and Springtown High School is in one of those states.

Further, at the school near Fort Worth, administrators are considering loosening their spanking rules because they believe the current rules have created a problem.

WFAA-TV in Dallas reports that about a week ago teachers busted 15-year-old Taylor Santos and another student for supposedly copying classwork, giving Santos two days of in-school suspension.

After the sophomore missed one class, she asked a vice principal to vacate the suspension in exchange for a paddling, which is allowed under Texas law and school policy. The vice principal had Santos call her mother for approval first, per school policy, and then school officials went ahead with the spanking.

“I knew school policy was females swatted females and males swatted males,” her mother, Anna Jorgensen, told WFAA-TV. “If Taylor wanted that, I said that would be fine.”

But when a male vice principal hit Santos on her buttocks with a paddle, she said, she developed welts so severe that her mother thought she had been burned and blistered.

The spanking was against school policy, which holds that spankings are only allowed for spankers and spankees of the same sex.

Then Santos’ story hit the news.

Now the district’s superintendent, Mike Kelley, is trying to change the school’s paddling policy — so that male teachers are allowed to hit female students, making spankings like Santos’ OK in the future.

An item proposing a revision to the school’s student discipline rules has been placed on the school board’s consent agenda.

The Springtown School District has gotten in trouble in the past for its corporal punishment. In 2007, a Springtown Middle School coach paddled a 12-year-old boy so hard that it left a large bruise on his thigh, spurring officials to restrict paddlings to administrators, according to the Weatherford Democrat.

Last year, the Star-Telegram found that the Springtown School District did more spanking than any other district in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

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