CassvillePublicSchools, a small district in the southwest corner of the state, announced a controversial policy change this school year: The student handbook now includes corporal punishment. Under the policy, a misbehaving student can now be swatted on the buttocks with a paddle. Most states have banned corporal punishment, but Missouri is one of 19 that haven’t. Corporal punishment is one of several options for the school, and it requires the approval of a student’s parents. Superintendent Meryl Johnson told KRBK that some parents see this as a better alternative to suspensions and other hands-off means the district uses to discipline its nearly 1,900 students. The updated policy has drawn mixed reactions from parents in the community as well as outsiders. “I do not think it’s appropriate,” Miranda Waltrip, a parent of three Cassville students, told KRBK. “We live in a really small community where people were raised a certain way,” she said. “And so, for them, it’s like go...