School administrators will be allowed to paddle students of the opposite sex under a rule approved unanimously Monday night by the school board in the North Texas community of Springtown. …

Under the previous policy, corporal punishment could only be carried out by an administrator who was of the same gender as the student. The new policy says that a school official of the same gender as the student must be in the room where the paddling takes place and that parents must provide written permission for their child to be paddled. …

“We don’t have a very large district and in our middle school there is only an assistant principal, who is a female,” Kelley said. “If the old policy remains in place, then the parents of the boys at the middle school would not be able to request corporal punishment.”