Haircut sparks controversy at Staten Island middle school
by Staten Island Advance
Monday June 01, 2009, 2:41 PM


Dennis Reynolds,14, of Mariners Harbor, claims he was sent home from Barnes Intermediate school for shaving half his head.


Half-dressed is clearly against school policy, but what about half a haircut?

Dennis Reynolds, an eighth-grader at Staten Island's Barnes Intermediate School in Great Kills, claims he was sent home this morning because he arrived with half his head shaved.

And while the city Department of Education's Student Bill of Rights and Discipline Code has plenty to say about inappropriate attire, there's not a single word about hair do's and dont's.

"The assistant principal told me my hair cut wasn't good enough," Dennis, 14, said from his Mariners Harbors home when he should have been in school getting in one last review session before tomorrow's state social studies exam.

An Education Department spokeswoman called it "a misunderstanding." The phone call home was a formality to make sure Dennis' mom knew what he did to his hair.

"The principal did not tell the parent to take the child home," said spokeswoman Margie Feinberg. "The parent decided to take him home. He slept at a friend's house and had his head half shaved. If he wanted to go to school like that, he could have."

But Carmen Reynolds said her son slept in his own bed on Saturday and Sunday night -- and she was well aware of his new look.

"They're lying," the angry mom said. "I would never let my child sleep at a friend's house on a school night and why would I take him out of school first thing Monday morning when he has a state test the next day?"

Dennis said he was removed from his first-period math class by an assistant principal.

"I answered that a lot of kids have earrings hanging out of their mouths on their tongues, but I can't have a haircut? She told me not to compare myself to anyone and then I was told 'you have to leave.'"

He asked them to call his mother for a ride.

His fellow students, he said, barely batted an eye.

"They just asked why I had half a hair cut and that was it," he said.

And why such a style?

"I didn't want to go completely bald," he said simply, though he was planning to go back to the barbershop to have a star design shaved into his remaining locks.

His mother argued with the assistant principal that there is no policy about haircuts.

And she's right.

Political buttons, badges and armbands are OK.

Suggestive clothing, gang colors or anything that is deemed "libelous, obscene, or materially disrupts the school, causes substantial disorder, or invades the rights of others" is not.

But haircuts? There's nothing in the policy about them.

"Kids go with Mohawks and braids and dyed hair and they don't make an issue," Mrs. Reynolds said. "If a Mohawk is allowed, everything else should be allowed."

Dennis' mom wasn't splitting any hairs about her son's buzz cut -- she just wanted him in school, where he belonged.

"These young kids like all kinds of things on their hair," she said. "It's better than wearing his pants hanging down. That I won't tolerate. They would be totally right if they called me about that, but to call me for this, it's really ridiculous."

-- Reported by Stephanie Slepian

http://www.silive.com/news/index.ssf/2009/06/staten_island_middle_school_st.html

this one is worse:

http://www.kmbc.com/news/19583351/detail.html

you cut MY kid's hair, and we're going round and round.