Posted: Tuesday, November 24, 2009 11:32 am

Rutherford County Schools will tackle the issue of corporal punishment tonight at a special-called board meeting.

The board will review its policy on corporal punishment after a civil rights group filed a complaint with the Office of Civil Rights against any district who uses the Tennessee School Board Association policy because on the surface it could be construed as being discriminatory.

Most school districts in the state have adopted the TSBA policy on corporal punishment.

Part of the language says that principals may take into account things such as gender, size, and emotional wellbeing, and so on when deciding how much corporal punishment to give.

TSBA has contacted OCR to work a way to fix the language so that it is not discriminatory and once that is done, TSBA will send out the new language for school districts to adopt. TSBA has suggested deleting that entire portion of the policy, but OCR has not responded yet.

The board will also consider a policy change to contracted bus services.