No splitting hairs: School district won’t modify dress code to accommodate boy

A school district in western Chambers County will not alter its dress code for a 4-year-old boy barred from classes because of his long hair.

Barbers Hill ISD Superintendent Greg Poole told Chron.com that the district “should justifiably be criticized if our district lessened its expectations or long-standing policies simply to appease” Jessica Oates, the mother who will not cut her son Jabez’s hair.

“Parents have a right to seek an appropriate educational setting for their child, just as Ms. Oates has the right to place her child in a district that reflects her personal expectations for standards of appearance. There are procedures in place for addressing concerns over policy if it is Ms. Oates’ desire to have her son educated in Barbers Hill ISD,” Poole added in a statement.

The boy’s hair resulted in his removal from a Barbers Hill kindergarten center Friday afternoon because it was too long. The student handbook, which Oates signed, states that the boy’s hair “will not extend below the eyebrows, below the ear lobes, or below the top of a T-shirt collar. Corn rows and/or dread locks are permitted if they meet the aforementioned lengths.”

Oates, 25, believes the district is discriminating against Jabez, who has stayed home all week.

“My child, being that he was accepted into the government-funded program, has every right to the schooling here in BHISD without discriminatory policies — policies that blatantly disregard culture, religion and sex,” Oates said Wednesday morning. “The policies in place for rectifying the situation have been addressed on my end. I will do everything I can to afford my child the right to an education here without being discriminated against.”

Dress codes policing boys with long hair are nothing new. In September 1970, Elton Martin was a student at South Laurel Senior High School in Pennsylvania when the administration passed a new dress code prohibiting boys from having long hair.

“Everyone else (cut their hair) but I resisted and contacted the ACLU,” Martin told Chron.com. “I was suspended and eventually reinstated with an injunction from the federal judge until we had a hearing in the U.S. District Court in Pittsburgh.”

Five months later, a Pennsylvania judge ruled in Martin’s favor and cited the 14th Amendment, ordering that the government — a public school in this case — could not take away his property (hair) without due process and compensation, Martin said.

Oates planned on visiting Barbers Hill administrators Wednesday to discuss her options. The district is about 40 miles east of Houston.