TIPTON COUNTY, Tenn. — Parents are outraged, saying Covington Integrated Arts Academy school administrators crossed the line.
They said their fifth- and sixth-graders were paddled for laughing and speaking loudly on the school bus.
Some are calling the punishment extremely harsh. The parents said they’re so angry, they put their kids in another school.
“It just feels like everything that my kids told me has resulted in them fearing what’s going to happen when they go to school,” Elizabeth Jackson Ragsdale said.
Ragsdale and her husband Chris transferred their children to another school when they came home crying last month. They said they were paddled at school for talking and laughing loudly on the school bus.
“I feel like they are abusing their privileges up there of being administrators and being over our children,” Elizabeth Ragsdale said.
The Ragsdales said their kids were also suspended off the bus. They think the punishment is ridiculous.
“Ain’t no kid supposed to be treated like that, period,” Chris Ragsdale said.
WREG asked parents in Tipton County if corporal punishment was necessary in this situation.
“Sometimes you have to do what you have to do to get to a child mind and heart,” a parent said.
Another disagreed: “Yea, I feel that’s an unfair punishment.”
The Ragsdales told WREG this isn’t the first time their kids were punished. Their oldest son was spanked after getting into a fight with another student at the beginning of the school year.
They said every situation doesn’t deserve corporal punishment.
“To me that’s not right,” Elizabeth Ragsdale said.
The Ragsdales also said they told administrators to contact them first before spanking or paddling their children, but they said the school didn’t do that.
The superintendent said every parent is given a form at the beginning of the school year listing information about corporal punishment. It does not state that a parent has to be contacted first.
The superintendent told WREG this is his first time hearing about the incident, and he plans to look into it to make sure the school followed policy.