Corporal punishment is officially a thing of the past for the Iberia Parish School District after the school board voted to eliminate the policy at last week’s meeting.

Superintendent of Schools Heath Hulin said the board voted to completely remove the policy from the books during the meeting, meaning that corporal punishment will no longer be used as a disciplinary consequence in the future.

Although the vote spells the official end of the policy, the school district has operated without the use of corporal punishment for the past two school years, and prior to that only seven of the 25 site administrators used it as a disciplinary consequence.

Legal counsel Wayne Landry said since the directive to cease implementation of corporal punishment, behavior interventionists have been placed at the two schools with the highest incidents in order to assist with student discipline.

In a letter to the board, Landry said he recommended the deletion due to the counterproductive risk that the punishment produces and is also inconsistent and confusing for teachers and employees. The burden that corporal punishment puts on liability insurance alone is problematic.

Schools have also developed other ways of disciplining students including detention, academic Saturdays/weekend detention, parent/student conferences, referral to a school counselor or social worker, restorative centers, adjustment centers, in-school suspension programs and probation cards. The administration is also in the process of pursuing the implementation of a district Saturday Detention Program that could be used by a school who does not have a school-based detention program and expanding the number of slots available at the i-school suspension program.