GETTING RID OF CORPORAL PUNISHMENT:

When I was elected to the school board, I had to run in four elections in order to get elected!  I ran in 1990 against the incumbent Garry Weiss and got in a run-off.  Then I ran in the run off and lost to Mr. Weiss.

The next year in 1991, I also got in a run-off against the incumbent David Frishman, and then I defeated him in the run-off.

Serving with Mr. Weiss on the Board, I found I did not have much in common with him with regard to our beliefs about public education.  Actually at the time I did not believe that  Mr. Weiss had too many opinions at all about public education as it appeared to me that he was only on the board to push his business enterprises. However he wasn't doing anything that others hadn't done before him or since, in my opinion.

The one concern that Mr. Weiss and I did share had to do with the use of corporal punishment in the schools.

Mr. Weiss, it appeared to me, was against it for social reasons.  At least he never gave any reasons other than that he just didn't like it when the matter came up for a vote. I assumed that it was Mr. Weiss who put the matter on the Board's agenda. The first time it came up, he didn't have enough votes to prevail.

Later (maybe the next year), one night, the matter was on the agenda again, and somehow two of the board members who were not in favor of removing the paddling practice, did not show up for the board meeting.

By then board member Ken Burton and I were in agreement with Mr. Weiss on the matter, and so we insisted that the agenda item be presented and voted upon.  The others did not want to vote because their supporters were missing!  They even stopped the meeting and called the Board's attorney for advice.

He evidently said they had to vote, and we won and they lost. Actually the students won, in my opinion.

I have written about this elsewhere on this website, but I mention it here because it wouldn't have passed if I hadn't voted for it and urged Mr. Burton to also vote to end it. 

Personally I was opposed particularly to coaches having the authority to paddle students.  In my opinion I thought they used it in a way that it was never intended and were sometimes too harsh. I thought that only assistant principals should deliver this punishment.

Of particular concern to me was the fact that an excessive number (in my opinion) of African American young men were being paddled by a coach at Katy Junior High. (The District by law had to keep a record of who was getting paddled, when it happened, and who administered it.  I had asked to see those records.)  I tried other ways to get that practice stopped and was unsuccessful, so ending the practice altogether was the only alternative.

Also, as a crossover teacher in 1970 at Booker T. Washington in Houston ISD, I had been appalled on the first day of school to see almost every African American teacher who was still remaining at the school, standing in the hall between every class with a big paddle with holes in it (that makes it sting more) swatting every student they could reach as they walked past their door between classes!  These students hadn't done a thing, but they were getting swats just for the heck of it. I've never been able to get rid of that bad memory.

So my vote on this matter, while many thought it unlike me, was well warranted in my opinion.

It wasn't long after that that the State of Texas banished corporal punishment in the public schools. Many assistant principals and school board members believe that removing that punishment was the downfall of keeping order in our schools, but if that is the case, it is the fault of those who abused the right that are to blame.