A Michigan father has moved his 7-year-old biracial daughter from one school to another after a classmate and a teacher cut her hair on different occasions.
Jimmy Hoffmeyer said Monday that he is also considering taking his daughter, Jurnee, out of Mount Pleasant public schools and enrolling her in a private school.
On March 24, Jurnee arrived home from Ganiard Elementary School with much of her hair cut to one side. He said a classmate used scissors to cut his hair on the school bus, Hoffmeyer told The Associated Press.
Two days later, after complaining to the director and having Jurnee’s hair combed in a salon with an asymmetrical cut to make the different lengths less obvious, Jurnee came home with her hair on the other side cut.
“I was crying,” Hoffmeyer said. “I was afraid I would have trouble cutting my hair.”
“I asked what was going on and I said, ‘I thought I was telling you that no child should ever cut your hair,'” she continued. The teacher cut her hair to match it.
Hoffmeyer said the explanations he has received from the principal and the district have done little to appease him.
The school called after the bus incident and “said the girl stole the scissors from the teacher’s desk and they were going to talk to the parents and treat him accordingly,” she said.
Later, the school principal told him that the most that could happen to the library teacher was a note on his work record, Hoffmeyer said.
“He said he didn’t have the authority to do anything,” he added. “I kept wondering what I could do to get him to leave.”
Hoffmeyer said he filed an incident report with Mount Pleasant police, but as of Monday no officer had contacted him to follow up on the complaint.
Hoffmeyer said he received a call from the district superintendent about a week after the school’s spring break. He offered to send “I’m sorry” cards to the family, he said.
“I got angry and hung up,” said Hoffmeyer, who is black and white. Jurnee’s mother is white.
“I’m not one to try to do things about the race,” he said. “I’ve practically grown up with only white people.”
The girl who cut her hair in Jurnee is white. The teacher who cut him is also white, said Hoffmeyer, who has two more daughters, ages 8 and 4.
Mount Pleasant is about 151 miles northwest of Detroit. About 4% of Mount Pleasant’s 25,000 residents are black, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Hoffmeyer works with the National Parents Union, a national network of parent and activist organizations that advocate for improving children’s quality of life.
In a statement released Tuesday afternoon, the district superintendent, Jennifer Verleger, confirmed Hoffmeyer’s story and added that the boy’s teacher was aware of the library employee’s plan to cut his hair. ‘student. The haircut was done without the permission of the student’s parents or consulting the school administrators.
“Regardless of their good intentions, these actions were unacceptable and show a lack of judgment on the part of our two employees,” Verleger said in a statement. “Both are being reviewed for additional disciplinary action in agreement without school policies and procedures.”
Verleger added that he has apologized personally to the student’s family.
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Williams reported from West Bloomfield, Michigan.
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This story has been corrected to show that on Monday afternoon a voice message was left seeking comments from the Ganiard director.