A model with red hair (ThinkStock)
An Alabama girl’s high school sent her home earlier this month because her hair was dyed a bright shade of red, the Huffington Post reports, citing a news story that was originally reported by WAFF-TV.
The district’s superintendent supports the principal’s decision to send Hayleigh Black home from Muscle Shoals High School, since the student handbook says students won’t be able to attend classes if their hair “has been dyed a bright or distractive color.” The school’s principal told ABC News that the rule was put in place to provide a “safe environment conducive to learning.”
Hayleigh has removed the red dye and is back in class, but her family is fighting to get the school to allow Hayleigh to return to her preferred shade. A federal lawsuit has been discussed, though nobody has filed one yet, to get the school to revise the policy.
The family’s attorney has said the whole sequence has damaged Hayleigh’s self-esteem. “She’s been a little down,” The Mail quoted her mother, Kim Boyd, as saying. “She misses her hair color. I’m upset for her. I just felt very angered that my child—a good student, no problems ever—is having her feet knocked out from under her on the first day of school.”
It has been noted, here on Fox News, that school officials didn’t object to Hayleigh’s hair color for the past three years and just brought it up now.
“Whether people thinks it’s bright or not, her hair was that same color for the last three years,” WAFF-TV quoted Jon McGee, the family’s attorney, as saying. “Now before she even goes to her first day of school it’s an issue. They just want to be treated fairly; that’s all this is about, and letting Hayleigh be the child, the person she is.”
We don’t think hair color is “distracting” or harms the learning process at all. We encourage kids to be individualistic and to accept responsibility for their actions, and then we confuse the issue by punishing them for a behavior that is not at all disruptive or harmful to anybody. The policy should be revised regarding hair dye, but I think the school district lost this battle when it failed to advise Hayleigh that her hair color was unacceptable in the school for several years.
