RALEIGH
Children's advocates in North Carolina are this year seeking a spanking ban on students with disabilities after losing political tussles over corporal punishment in public schools the past few years.
Equipped with a report showing that corporal punishment was used more than 1,400 times in 26 school districts last school year, speakers at a General Assembly education committee asked legislators yesterday to consider a paddling ban for children with physical, mental or learning challenges when they reconvene in Raleigh in May.
About 13 percent of the state's public-school students are disabled.
There are better and more-positive ways for teachers and administrators to deal with these children for their disruptive behavior than hitting them, said Sheri Strickland, the president of the North Carolina Association of Educators and a longtime teacher of disabled children.
"I didn't hit my children for not knowing how to read ... and I wasn't going to hit my children for not knowing appropriate behavior," Strickland said. "We know that it's critical to a child's academic success to have positive contact with caring adults."
The new effort comes after the legislature has declined to approve broader spanking bans. The House rejected in 2007 a statewide prohibition in all 115 school districts as opponents argued that current state law should remain in place giving local education boards the choice on spanking.
The Winston-Salem/Forsyth County has banned corporal punishment, said Theo Helm, a system spokesman.
The House approved by a wide margin last year a bill giving parents the option of exempting their children from corporal punishment in the district where such a penalty is still carried out, but the Senate narrowly defeated the idea.
Now advocates have scaled back their request.
"That's our limited request to you to consider in this session," Tom Vitaglione, a senior fellow at Action for Children, told legislators.
Thirty states and the District of Columbia have barred corporal punishment in the public schools, according to The Center for Effective Discipline, an Ohio-based group seeking to end the practice.
Data on corporal punishment are hard to accumulate in North Carolina because local districts aren't required to report to the Department of Public Instruction on its use.
Action for Children contacted each school district and found that 89 either ban corporal punishment outright or don't use it.
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