Sheldon Williams, a student at Marshall Junior High had a tragic encounter with school administrators Monday because of two partings on his hair.
KSLA reported that Williams told them that his teacher says “We’re not supposed to have two parts only one”
“I was kind of mad, I don’t want no sharpie marker in my hair.” said Williams to KSLA.
According to the reports, William says administrators used a permanent sharpie marker in his hair to color in one of the lines on each side of his scalp.
William’s mother told KSLA ” they’ve never had a problem with him meeting school dress code, even looking at the student code of conduct under ‘dress and groomin’ the list of prohibited styles only says ‘designs shaved into hair’.
According to KYTX , the principal told them this is the first time she’s had to deal with such an issue like this one on campus and was told by a faculty member that they had handled the problem with a marker in the past.
On Tuesday, school administrator said they regret not calling his parents and don’t plan to handle the hair designs the same way again.
This situation has the east side of Texas raving mad. It is not like Williams had a gang symbol or something of a foul nature shaved in his hair.
While the purpose of the rule is to dissuade students from having gang symbols shaved into their heads, Williams shaving on the other hand is clearly done to give the impression that his hair is parted on the two sides. To many parents it looks stylish and respectful.
So if the school has fixed ‘grooming’ violations like this in the past with permanent marker, a good rule of thumb would be to fire on the spot such a violation of a child. These markers contain chemicals which are not intended for human skin.
It’s easy for the administrators to say they plan to handle the situation differently next time, but according to parents at the school, they insist legal action needs to be taken to make sure this never happens again and the Texas School Board should be held accountable for such a private violation, to include bodily injury, defacing private property and assault on a student. The school had no right to place their hands on the child.
It is hard to teach students when the faculty haven’t mastered the art of self respect. Not to bring politics in, but Governor Perry took billions of dollars in Obama stimulus money and used it to balance Texas State budget and not what it was intended for. Texas Public schools are $4 billion underfunded with the worst graduation rate in the nation.
If the schools spent more time ‘teaching’ their students as they do correcting simple dress code, the kids would be better educated instead of being just fodder for Texas’ for profit prisons.