Black girl told her natural hair style is inappropriate, sent home from school

May 8, 2016

A third grader girl in Belton, Texas, was recently sent home from Tarver Elementary school because the assistant principal did not approve of her hairstyle. The school’s code of conduct prohibits mohawks and ‘faux hawks,’ but the little girl’s mother, Marian Reed, claims the style she gave her daughter is neither of those. She also pointed out that there were no complaints when her daughter wore the same style but with long artificial extensions.

Reed spoke to local news team and told them the incident has traumatized her daughter, making her cry, and say that “no one was going to want to be her friend because her hair was not as pretty as the assistant principal’s… that’s heartbreaking because that’s just what God naturally gave her.”

Reed would like to see school administrators go through diversity training and is upset at the way this incident was handled from the start. “They could have called me and discussed it with me without pulling her out of class and without having that conversation in front of her because now she’s questioning her natural image and, at nine years old, she’s going to remember that for the rest of her life,” she said.

Charla Trejo, who is the executive director of campus leadership, had this to say about the situation, “We had an assistant principal call a parent and make them aware of the dress code issues and then just try to resolve that by asking them to take care of that… Do we need training? We are always willing to train and to learn and do things, however, this particular situation was about consistency. It was about making sure we have the same expectations for everyone.”