Pro­pos­al would give immu­ni­ty to schools that spank:

One Kansas sen­a­tor thinks that a quar­ter-inch of pine might be part of the solu­tion to school dis­ci­pli­nary problems.

Sen. Phil Jour­ney, R‑Wichita, plans to intro­duce a bill on Mon­day that would shield edu­ca­tors from legal lia­bil­i­ty for admin­is­ter­ing cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment to students.

“From what I’ve seen and what I’ve been told by teach­ers and par­ents, we need to bring some order to schools, par­tic­u­lar­ly mid­dle schools,” Jour­ney said.

Like sev­en oth­er states, Kansas has no law regard­ing spank­ing in schools. Twen­ty-eight states ban cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment in schools.

Jour­ney’s bill would allow local school boards to make a deci­sion about the mat­ter, and would require par­ents to give per­mis­sion to spank their mis­be­hav­ing brats.

He “said he thinks there are enough safe­guards in his pro­pos­al to keep school spank­ing from get­ting out of hand.”

Rep. Geral­dine Fla­har­ty, D‑Wichita, said she thinks Jour­ney’s pro­pos­al is unnec­es­sary because almost all Kansas school dis­tricts have moved beyond spank­ing as a means of punishment.

Fla­har­ty, a retired teacher with 36 years of class­room expe­ri­ence, said once the spank­ing starts, it’s hard to keep it under control.

It’s good that every­one agrees we want to keep the spank­ing from get­ting out of hand. 

In 2006, Phil Jour­ney wrote (but did­n’t file for con­sid­er­a­tion) a bill to require reg­is­tered sex offend­ers to be issued pink license plates. He opposed manda­to­ry cas­tra­tion for sex offend­ers, telling the Pitch Week­ly “They’re still sick peo­ple that will abuse oth­ers. Did­n’t you see the movie Sin City?”

If Hol­ly­wood has taught us noth­ing, it’s that per­verts should only spank chil­dren if their par­ents say it’s OK, and that we should­n’t let it get out of hand.