A DAD of a 7-year-old girl is suing a school for $1million after a teacher “cut his daughter’s hair without his permission”.
Jimmy Hoffmeyer from Michigan has filed a lawsuit against Mount Pleasant Public Schools. He is a teacher assistant and a librarian.
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It alleges racial discrimination, assault, battery ethnic intimidation and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
Jurnee, his biracial daughter, is now at another school.
Hoffmeyer says that the girl returned from Ganiard Elementary School with her hair cut on one side.
According to Hoffmeyer, his daughter was cut by a classmate while riding on the school bus. The scissors were stolen from her classroom.
Her parents complained to the school principal at the time and had the girl’s hair styled at a salon.
Two days later, she returned from school with her hair cut on one side.
“She was crying,” Hoffmeyer described the situation at the time. “She was afraid of getting in trouble for getting her haircut.
“I asked what happened and said ‘I thought I told you no child should ever cut your hair,’” He went on.
“She said ‘but dad, it was the teacher.’ The teacher cut her hair to even it out.”
Grand Rapids filed the lawsuit alleging that the district failed properly to train and supervise its employees.
In July, the district claimed the staffer who had cut the girl’s hair had been reprimanded and an independent third-party investigation had determined that despite “good intentions” of the worker who cut the girl’s hair, doing so without permission from her parents and without the knowledge of district administrators violated school policy.
Two other employees who didn’t report the incident and the staffer have since apologized.
A school board investigation found no racial bias, but Hoffmeyer claims he wasn’t questioned about the incident.
Jimmy stated that neither he or his daughter were interviewed as part the investigation.
“Who did they talk to?” Mr Hoffmeyer wanted to know when the results of this investigation would be announced. “Did they really do an investigation?”
“We are confident that the facts will prevail given our district’s appropriate and aggressive response to the incident and the findings of the third-party investigation that was conducted,” Amy Bond, the president of Pleasant Public Schools Board of Education stated in a statement. “We will aggressively defend against these baseless allegations in court and will not allow this to distract us from our mission to provide every child a world-class education that prepares them for college and careers.”
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