Mom Angry After School Draws On Son's Head With Marker

Photo by KCBD.com

The mother of a middle school boy is demanding an apology after a school administrator drew on her son’s head with a marker. 

Monica Esquival’s son, Kobi, has a haircut that his mother says is on-trend, according to Texas news station KCBD. “The style that’s coming out is the comb over,” she says. The cut features a shaved line in the side of Kobi’s head, intended to look like a part. Kobi has had the cut for five months, but Esquival says that last week, officials at Coronado Middle School in El Paso, Texas decided his hair was a distraction, and could be interpreted as gang-related. 

As a solution, Esquival says the school’s assistant principal colored in the shaved line with a black marker, without her permission. “My son is not in a gang, he’s not trying to be in a gang. He dresses in khakis, a shirt, not in loose pants or anything, just real nice and casual,” Esquival told KCBD. She’s hoping the school will apologize to her son, and insists that his hair does, in fact, comply with school rules. “When I got copies of the dress code, on there it says, ‘designs shaved through the head,’ but I said it’s not a design, it’s the haircut.” She suggested that the school should consider updating the dress code. 

Photo by KCBD.com

Officials at the Plainview Independent School District did not respond to Yahoo Parenting’s request for comment, but Executive Director for Administrative Services, Greg Brown, addressed the incident at a recent school board meeting, according to the Plainview Daily Herald. “I can’t comment on the details of the specific incident you mentioned due to confidentiality,” he said. “Our dress code prohibits designs shaved into the scalp and this includes lines. The dress code is a part of the Parent/Student handbook that is made available to all students online and in paper form (if requested). Each year in the spring and early summer the handbook is edited and developed to get it ready for the next school year. The dress code is specifically looked at by the administration who makes any changes that need to be made. In its final recommended form, the handbook is presented to the School Board for approval, usually in July.”

After speaking to school administrators, Esquival told KCBD that Kobi will be given time to grow out his hair, and he won’t have to endure any more markers.

Coronado isn’t the first school to punish a student for a haircut deemed inappropriate. Last January, a Florida school issued an in-school suspension to a boy who showed up with the Miami Heat logo and the city’s area code shaved into his head. In 2012, a Texas middle-schooler got the same punishment for showing up with the face of one of the San Antonio Spurs designed into his hair. And in 2013, a 5-year-old kindergartner with a mohawk was sent home for violating the school dress code. He was allowed to return once he shaved his head.