A school official wanted to OK paddling because it ‘worked’ on him. He got his wish.

A Texas school district has decided to bring back paddling.

Three Rivers Independent School District voted 6-0 (with one member absent) Tuesday to allow paddling to return to its classrooms, though only with parents’ permissions, according to the Corpus Christi Caller-Times. A campus behavior coordinator or principal are the only employees who can administer the punishment, and parents will decide upon registering their children within the district whether the students can be paddled.

“If the parent is not comfortable with it, that’s the end of the discussion,” Superintendent Mary Springs said, according to the Caller-Times.

Students would receive one paddling for minor infractions, such as disobeying a teacher or not following classroom rules, according to KHOU.

Three Rivers Elementary School’s campus behavior coordinator, Andrew Amaro, pitched the idea to district officials earlier this year, according to the Caller-Times. He was a student within the school district and said he was paddled growing up, so he hopes the disciplinary method will be more effective than detention or suspension.

“I believe it worked,” Amaro told the Caller-Times. “It was an immediate response for me. I knew that if I got in trouble with a teacher and I was disrespectful, whatever the infraction was, I knew I was going to get a swat by the principal.”

Corporal punishment – though not necessarily paddling – is more common in the U.S. than some may think. It was used on more than 110,000 students in the 2013-14 academic year, according to the U.S. Department of Education. Texas schools use corporal punishment more than in any other state, according to the American Civil Liberities Union and Human Rights Watch.

Students of color and those with disabilities are disproportionately likely to have corporal punishment used on them, according to Secretary of Education John B. King, Jr. in a letter asking states to outlaw the practice. Currently, 22 states – many of them in the southern region of the U.S. – still allow corporal punishment in schools.

“Approximately 40,000 — or more than one-third — of those students who were subjected to corporal punishment are black; black students, by comparison, make up only 16 percent of the total public school student population,” King wrote. “Similarly, in states where students were subjected to corporal punishment, black boys were 1.8 times as likely as white boys to be subject to corporal punishment, and black girls were 2.9 times as likely as white girls to be subject to corporal punishment.”

Studies have found that physical punishment is linked to increased odds of mood disorders, anxiety disorders, alcohol and drug abuse/dependence, and several personality disorders.

This story was originally published July 21, 2017 at 7:53 AM with the headline "A school official wanted to OK paddling because it ‘worked’ on him. He got his wish.."