(Anchorage, AK) Substitute teacher suspended for spanking children--REGULATIONS: School District policy does not allow corporal punishment
By Rosemary Shinohara Anchorage Daily News,April 26, 2001

A substitute teacher is accused of spanking three children in a kindergarten class at Creekside Park Elementary Tuesday in violation of Anchorage School District policy and state regulations.

Principal Dave Combs said he learned of the incidents Wednesday when parents of two of the children called.

"It turned out to be one swat on the butt, open-handed, which is still spanking," Combs said. The children told Combs they were swatted for talking.

He said he is required to notify police and the state Division of Family and Youth Services, and did so. The district told the substitute that he cannot work in Anchorage public schools at least until an investigation is complete, Combs said. He declined to identify the substitute teacher and said he had not interviewed him.

The substitute taught kindergartners at Creekside Park in East Anchorage on Monday and Tuesday. The spankings are alleged to have happened Tuesday. Combs said he interviewed children Wednesday after the parents called, and the children backed up the reports.

Combs said such an incident has never happened before as far as he knows. "Not to me it hasn't. Not at my school."

Corporal punishment in public schools is banned by the state Department of Education, and the School District has had a specific rule against it since the mid-1980s.

Anchorage teachers are only allowed to use force to restrain students from damaging property or people, or to get weapons away from them.