In the name of parental rights, new law requires sign-off for corporal punishment in Florida schools
The number of students paddled in Florida schools may decrease now that parents are included in a new state law.
Starting this school year, the state requires parents to approve use of corporal punishment before school districts may administer it.
According to Florida Department of Education data, schools inflicted corporal punishment in 516 instances during the 2023-24 school year.
“It’s quite honestly amazing that this hasn’t previously been in place in Florida, in a state that really prides itself for its work protecting parental rights,” Jacob Kaplan, president of the Florida Student Policy Forum, based at the University of Florida, which lobbied for the new law, told the Phoenix.
Nineteen public school districts in Florida allow corporal punishment, defined as “the moderate use of physical force or physical contact by a teacher or principal as may be necessary to maintain discipline or to enforce school rule.”
Some counties that administer corporal punishment request parental consent, while others just require notification that the punishment could be administered.
According to the National Education Association, 17 states allow corporal punishment.
Kaplan, a sophomore, was part of the group that, with the help of Moms for Liberty, navigated the legislative process to get lawmakers on board with the idea.
The process started before Kaplan entered UF. Four years in the making, the proposal started as an outright ban of corporal punishment but switched to requiring parental consent after running into roadblocks inside the Capitol.
Graham Bernstein, former director for political affairs for the Policy Forum and a May University of Florida graduate, said the idea really came to his attention after he read a 2021 article about a six-year-old in Hendry County who was paddled after scratching a computer screen.
According to news reports, the girl’s mother asked administrators to help her discipline the child, and watched and recorded the paddling. Prosecutors did not press criminal charges against the principal.
“Sunlight is the best disinfectant. There is now going to be, whether it’s a paper trail of evidence, or an electronic trail of evidence, guaranteed by state law so that parents can make it clear what they want and what they don’t want, and so that quite frankly teachers and principals are more protected, as well,” Bernstein said.
Discrimination
HB 1255, passed this spring, requires parents to consent to corporal punishment either for the school year or before each instance the punishment is used in traditional public and charter schools.
Many of the districts that permit corporal punishment are northern, rural counties, like Suwannee, Holmes, Columbia, Jackson, Dixie, Hardee, Levy, Franklin, and Liberty.
Kim Winker, the Moms for Liberty Florida legislative chair for the 2025 session, told the Phoenix the law is “the right way to go” and benefits schools, teachers, administrators, parents, and students — and that she, too, was surprised to learn that corporal punishment was still occurring in Florida.
“We were concerned that parents were not given the right to opt in to student corporal punishment, and the fact that it was being disproportionately used on disabled students was concerning to us, as well. We wanted to advocate for allowing parents to decide the discipline decisions being made on their children at school,” Winker said — adding that she is “definitely for” an outright ban on corporal punishment.
According to data compiled by the Policy Forum, while students with disabilities comprise around 20% of school enrollment, in 2023-2024 they accounted for around 40% of corporal punishment inflictions. In Gilchrist County, that number was 59%.
The U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights wrote in 2022 that students with disabilities may face heightened discipline “because they are not receiving the support, services, interventions, strategies, and modifications to school or district policies that they need to manage their disability-based behavior.”
The department found students with disabilities may be “subjected to discrimination based on their disability when being disciplined, such as when students with disabilities are unnecessarily disciplined more severely than students without disabilities for the same or similar behavior.”
“The parents need to have the guardrails in place so they can choose what is right for their student, and the schools need to follow the parents’ wishes and have the parents more involved with that,” Winker said.
Other instances of corporal punishment in Florida schools have drawn media attention, such as in Lake County, which prohibits corporal punishment, when a bus monitor was accused of abusing a student with special needs in 2018; in 2019 in Broward County, which also prohibits corporal punishment, the Miami Herald wrote about a group of parents alleging students with autism bore bruises from a teacher; and an 18-year-old who told The74 that she felt like her teacher in Liberty County “got off by” paddling her.
The process
In addition to Kaplan and Graham Bernstein, Policy Forum members Adam Bernstein (no relation), and Konstantin contributed to the campaign. The organization works toward nonpartisan public policy, such as the initiative to give prisoners free phone calls if they demonstrate good behavior. That $1 million initiative was part of the final legislative budget, but Gov. Ron DeSantis vetoed the line item.
“You kind of come to understand that the people making our laws are people just like you and me, with imperfect information access, and that kind of bridging that gap more than anything can really be impactful in changing the lives of people across the state,” Adam Bernstein, a recent UF graduate, said.
A limit on the number of bills representatives may introduce and opposition from some lawmakers and legislative staff stood in the way of passing corporal punishment legislation in previous years, they said.
“I don’t know that I’ve ever encountered a more meaningful way of spending my time in terms of learning about public policy issues,” Graham Bernstein said.