Video: Teacher strikes student with paddle while classmates hold her down

A Florida teacher is in hot water for paddling one of her students while others held the teenager down.

Cell phone video captured by a classmate shows a teacher at Jacksonville’s Zarephath Academy striking 18-year-old Roshika Smith in the middle of a classroom.

The video shows male students in the class picked Smith up and flipped her over before the paddling began.

Smith faced discipline for allegedly running in the cafeteria.

Smith has not returned to school since the incident.

Watch the paddling incident unfold below:

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“Once they got me, they flip me over and grab me by my arms and my legs,” Smith told News4Jax. “So once they did that, my teacher just felt like they got me so she paddled me on my butt, close to my back. So for two days last week I didn’t come to school.”

The family has since began looking at legal action, despite the fact that the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office pointed out that Smith’s mother signed a permission form allowing corporal punishment by paddling.

“I believe my mom signed a contract for them to paddle students, but nowhere in the contract where they can show me where it’s OK for students to hold my sister when the teacher paddles them,” said Smith’s older sister, Roddericka Smith.

“I did not sign for them to hold her,” said Smith’s mother. “That’s against her will, to hold somebody and beat them like that.” She added, “I ain’t signing papers to be abused. I think that was abuse.”