'Dad, It Was The Teacher': Father Sues After Teacher Cuts Biracial Child's Hair Without Permission

[appalachiablue]

- Daily Kos, Sept. 22, 2021.

A father in Michigan has filed a lawsuit against his daughter’s school district after she came home with an unapproved haircut given to her by a teacher. The lawsuit, filed in federal court Sept. 14 for $1 million, alleges the 7-year-old biracial girl was racially and ethnically discriminated against. In addition, the teachers are facing eight counts of civil rights violations, MLive.com reported. It addresses the defendants as Mount Pleasant public schools, a librarian, and a teacher’s assistant. "Jurnee had long, curly hair prior to it being cut off," the complaint said.

“I asked what happened and said, ‘I thought I told you no child should ever cut your hair,’” ​​Jimmy Hoffmeyer, the child’s father, told the Associated Press. “She said, ‘But dad, it was the teacher.’ The teacher cut her hair to even it out.” Hoffmeyer told the AP that in March his daughter, Jurnee, arrived home from school with one side of her head unevenly cut, she told him then a classmate used scissors to cut her hair on a school bus. After the incident, she returned home days later with almost all her hair cut, but this time it wasn’t done by a student but by a teacher. “She was crying. She was afraid of getting in trouble for getting her hair cut,” Hoffmeyer told the AP.

After the initial incident, Hoffmeyer, a Black man, had taken his daughter to a hairdresser to correct the uneven cut. Therefore, he was shocked that a teacher attempted to cut his daughter’s hair herself. According to the suit, the school librarian, possibly with the help of a teaching assistant, cut Jurnee’s hair, leaving only a few inches. The teachers and the child who cut Jurnee’s hair are all white. According to Hoffmeyer’s lawsuit, the school district “failed to properly train, monitor, direct, discipline and supervise their employees, and knew or should have known that the employees would engage in the complained of behavior given the improper training, customs, procedures, and policies, and the lack of discipline that existed for employees.”

In July, the Mount Pleasant public schools board of education said the teacher who cut Jurnee’s hair was still employed, but had been reprimanded. This followed an independent investigation the school conducted during which they said they found “no evidence the incident was motivated by racial bias.” They noted that while the teacher had “good intentions,” cutting a student’s hair without parental permission or the school’s knowledge was a violation of policy. School officials put the teacher on a “last chance” agreement according to which they would be terminated if they violated another policy...

- More,
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/9/22/2053724/--Dad-it-was-the-teacher-Father-sues-after-teacher-cuts-biracial-child-s-hair-without-permission

[Jilly_in_VA]

1. There are people on other sites

claiming that she asked the other child to cut her hair "because she hated it" and that she asked the teacher to cut her hair because she didn't like the way the stylist cut it, and that the only reason she was crying was that she was afraid of her father. When asked to cite their sources, they either refuse to or can't, or tell me to "google it myself". Yeah sure.

[appalachiablue]

2. The ugly evasion sounds typical, 'google it.' No way

any teacher or school staff should have cut the child's hair w/o parental permission first. Maybe only in extreme situations such as gum or gunk in her hair. Overbearing, meddling staff need strong reprimands and more.

[Igel]

7. Bunch of stories.

https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2021/04/20/teacher-cuts-biracial-girl-hair-dad-angry-mount-pleasant/7298328002/
No, but it's an AP story.

https://nogagames.com/how-rude-disrespectful-and-really-disgusting-white-teacher-cuts-biracial-students-curly-hair-down-to-the-scalp-drawing-anger-online/

https://www.thefloridapost.com/michigan-man-says-teacher-classmate-cut-his-biracial-daughters-hair/

https://www.dailydot.com/irl/teacher-cuts-biracial-student-hair-michigan/

https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/07/us/biracial-girl-haircut-school-michigan-trnd/index.html

It'll be interesting to see how this plays out. That a girl would let a classmate and then two days later a teacher cut her hair--esp. when I suspect dad surely pitched a fit after the first instance--triggers a certain level of doubt. Children are very unreliable witnesses; they're easy to manipulate, easy to plant false memories in, and they are so dependent on adults that truth

[Srkdqltr]

3. I can not imagine that an educator would not know that cutting a child's hair without parental

permission is allowed. The amount of money asked for is not because a haircut is worth it but they need to reinforce the point that they can't do that. If the child wanted it done that way the teacher still should not do it. I am amazed that this was done.

[Skittles]

4. WTF

WHEN HAS THAT EVER BEEN ACCEPTABLE??? A TEACHER cutting a child's hair? W-T-F.

[PoliticAverse]

5. I assume the districts' legal advisors are advising them to settle the suit quickly. n/t

[mahatmakanejeeves]

6. Adding a link:

Morning Mix

A teacher cut a biracial girl’s hair without permission. Her father is suing for $1 million, claiming discrimination.

By Andrea Salcedo
September 20, 2021 at 7:40 a.m. EDT

When Jimmy Hoffmeyer’s daughter came home from her Michigan elementary school with an uneven haircut earlier this year, he asked what had happened to the girl’s missing curls.

She told her dad that another girl on her bus had used a pair of school scissors to cut her hair without permission.

Hoffmeyer, who is Black, according to a lawsuit obtained by The Washington Post, took his daughter to get a new haircut in an effort to conceal the missing locks. But a couple of days later, the 7-year-old girl, who is also listed as Black in court records, returned home with nearly all of her hair cut off . The girl’s mother is White, MLive.com reported.

But this time, a fellow student was not involved, the girl told her father. Without permission, her librarian had cut almost all of her hair down to a couple of inches from her scalp, court records state. A teacher’s assistant either participated or did not intervene, the lawsuit states.

{snip}

By Andrea Salcedo
Andrea Salcedo is a reporter on The Washington Post's Morning Mix team. Before joining The Post in 2020, she covered breaking news and features for the New York Times metro desk. Twitter https://twitter.com/andreapsalcedo

[Jilly_in_VA]

8. When I was in nursing school

the very first year it was explained to us that we were not to ever cut a patient's hair without their express permission, or that of a parent or guardian. To do so was considered assault. (Cutting nails is different because it's considered basic grooming, but if a patient had a professional manicure, that was a no-no too.) That was the reason we kept a bottle of Johnson's No More Tangles in the bottom drawer at the nurses' station, along with some other basic grooming supplies that we spent our own money on.