Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Corporal Punishment Brief

Friends

As I noted earlier, Action for Children is in the editing stages of an issue brief on corporal punishment. The focus of the brief is an analysis of the local cp policies collected by students at the UNC School of Social Work, under the direction of Gary Shaffer.

The essential message is that the State Board of Education does not seem to be interested in monitoring the administration of cp. The State Board does not collect local policies, and does not request reports of cp from the local districts. An additional focus will be on the great variation in local policies, once again hoping to embarrass the State Board that it has no idea what's going on.

After media consultation, we have decided not to have a press conference. Rather, we will have an embargoed release to give reporters time to craft stories and ask us questions. This has worked successfully with the release of the Child Health Report Card.

The actual release date is expected to be April 29. The embargoed copies will go out several days before that.

Please recall also that the Public Health Study Commission meets on April 22, and will decide at that time whether to submit a bill that would require reporting of cp (and hopefully ban the paddle as well).

Finally, several local health directors have become interested in the cp issue. I mentioned previously that pediatric residents are also interested. And Gary just noted that he has a network of social workers also interested. I am hoping we can create local "support teams" in selected counties to begin advocating for local bans.

That's it for now. Take care,
TomVitaglione

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