A father has sued a Michigan school after his daughter’s teacher cut the young girl’s hair without permission.
Jimmy Hoffmeyer, the father of 7-year-old Jurnee, made headlines after revealing that his daughter’s librarian chopped off the little girl’s gorgeous locks and destroyed her self-esteem in the process.
Now, the distressed father has filed a lawsuit against Mount Pleasant Public Schools and named Kelly Mogg, a librarian, and Kristen Jacobs, a teacher’s assistant, as defendants.
In his lawsuit, which seeks $1 million in damages, Hoffmeyer insisted that his daughter’s school staff assaulted the 7-year-old as they proceeded to cut her hair without permission.
The father has also accused the Ganiard Elementary school of ethnic intimidation, racial discrimination, and deliberate infliction of emotional distress.
“I’ve heard people say, ‘It’s only hair.’ But it’s not only hair to her. That was her image, that was her self-esteem. She has nightmares every night now,” Hoffmeyer said as he defended his decision to file a lawsuit against the people responsible for cutting his daughter’s hair down to just a few inches.
According to the father, Mogg decided to take things into her own hands and give the 7-year-old a new haircut back in March after a fellow student clipped Jurnee’s locks as part of a prank.
Making matters even worse, the school staff then went on to cut off the majority of the girl’s hair.
“Our kind of hair, you can’t just wet down and cut it. Even if they were trying to do it in the kindness of their heart, once they [saw] the outcome, they should have been like, ‘Yeah, we messed up. We should probably call him and let him know what just happened,’” Hoffmeyer said in an interview with WJRT.
After seeing the ‘horrible’ haircut and his daughter’s “embarrassed” expression, the father decided to contact the school and complain only to be infuriated further after he was told that the librarian wouldn’t face disciplinary action.
In July, after the father’s story first went viral, the Mount Pleasant Public Schools Board of Education confirmed that the librarian was reprimanded for cutting the child’s hair without her parents’ permission.
Though Mogg was not fired, the board placed her on a ‘last chance’ agreement, meaning that she will be terminated should another violation take part on her side.
“We believe a last chance agreement is appropriate given that the employee has an outstanding record of conduct and has never once been reprimanded in more than 20 years of work at MPPS,” the officials concluded.
As for Kristen Jacobs, the school’s teacher’s assistant has since apologized for not reporting the incident or informing the parents despite knowing about it.
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