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After differing the past eight years over how corporal punishment should be administered, the Franklin County School Board has decided to move away from the controversial practice.

The Franklin County School Board voted on the issue at its May 8 meeting with Erik Cole being the only member in opposition.

Board Member Sara Liechty moved to abandon the policy she said has become increasingly burdensome due to the language and conditions required to administer corporal punishment.

She said it is an antiquated practice that has proven to be detrimental to students, leaving some with longstanding emotional scars.

Cole said he appreciates the position of the board members wanting to do away with corporal punishment. However, he added he believes the practice still serves a purpose.

“I’m not in favor of taking a tool away from our principals,” he said, referring to how they can use corporal punishment as an effective way to promote good behavior.

Cole said he personally knows about corporal punishment, reflecting back to when he was a student.

“I got my fair share of them,” he said, referring to spankings.

The last time the School Board dealt with revisions to the system’s corporal-punishment policy was in January 2021 when it agreed in a split vote to keep the policy in effect.

Liechty and Board Member Sarah Marhevsky said at the time that corporal punishment is an outdated means to discipline children and sends the wrong message.

They said students who are being instructed about how negative violence is, or come from violent family settings, are being disciplined using violence, which is counterintuitive.

Former Board Member Chris Guess, who is now the Franklin County mayor, had said that from his personal experience, there’s a difference between child abuse and discipline.

The board has debated corporal punishment since 2015 and made minor revisions to the policy in 2017.

In 2015, the board geared the policy to have more parental involvement in the corporal-punishment process, and in 2017, it approved to give more leeway to students with disabilities.

The board approved in 2015 to keep corporal punishment, but the decision was in a 4-2 split vote with Guess and Liechty in opposition for different reasons.

Guess had said in 2015 that he voted against the issue because he supported having corporal punishment in the School System but wanted the policy left alone.

Liechty had said she was against corporal punishment, and many states have abandoned using it altogether. She had said she thought the Franklin County system should do the same.

Instead of simply changing the corporal punishment policy from “opt out” to “opt in,” the School Board approved a third option in 2015 — giving parents time to think about it.

Former Board Member Adam Tucker, who is an attorney, had recommended the board distribute consent forms rather than have parents opt out of the process as was previously done. He had said that it would minimize issues where parents disagree with how their child was treated.

Tucker said the main difference is parents would be giving permission to use corporal punishment on their children.

“From a legal standpoint, there’s a significant difference,” he had said, referring to parents being given the forms with an option to request their children receive corporal punishment rather than them requesting not to do it.

The section added in 2017 regarding students with disabilities required parents to give their consent in much more detail through written permission.