When we send our kids to school, we tend to believe that they are well taken care of as these institutions are supposed to be safe places for our little ones. The sad reality is that this is not always the case. Many times, educational institutions is where most of the bullying takes place, and not much is done regarding this issue which affects a huge number of young students.
However, when the assault and the bullying comes from a teacher, it is even more concerning, just as in the case of a 7-year-old girl named Jurnee whose hair was cut at school without her parents’ permission.
Jimmy Hoffmeyer, from Mount Pleasant, Michigan, is still looking for answers as to what truly happened on the day his daughter came home crying and saying her hair was cut. “After that teacher cut her hair, she was so embarrassed. So embarrassed. Because she had to go back to class like that,” Hoffmeyer said. To make things worse, this was the third time for the girl’s hair to be cut in a week.
The first time, one of the students did it, and Jimmy wasn’t particularly angry because he understood kids do such things. However, he was forced to take her to a hairdresser to make it more symmetrical. But now that the girl in distress told him she had a teacher cut it, he was left furious.
“Our kind of hair, you can’t just wet down and cut it because and that’s when I feel like they should have, even if they were trying to do it in the kindest of their heart, once they seen the outcome, they should have been like, yeah we messed up,” he told ABC12 News.
Once Jurnee’s story reached us, we leaned in to help get #JusticeForJurnee. We are currently seeking a civil rights attorney for the Hoffmeyer family and have sent formal requests to the district for evidence from the incident. @TheBWSTimeshttps://t.co/phx0XFHIIE
— National Parents Union (@NationalParents) April 16, 2021
Hoffmeyer tried contacting the school multiple times, but no one wanted to tell him what happened. “I would like them to own up to their responsibilities,” he said. “Like, we’ve been asking as a public apology for the most part to let Jurnee know that yes they acknowledge that it was wrong and that it should have never been done and that she should never have been through something like this.”
In the meantime, while he’s still waiting for answers some four months after the incident, the girl is transferred to another school.