A Little Girl Came Home From School With A Strange Haircut, And Her Dad Knew He Had To Call A Lawyer

Seven-year-old Jurnee lives with her father, Jimmy, and her mother in Mount Pleasant, Michigan. She’s just like any other little girl her age — she enjoys birthday parties, getting her face painted and going on family vacations. But Mount Pleasant turned out to be anything but that for the Hoffmeyers one school day in March 2021. 

Jurnee was supposed to be her usual, bubbly self when she arrived home that afternoon. But instead she was in tears, and the reason was obvious. The little girl’s curly blonde hair, of which she had been so proud, was a disaster. Someone had taken a pair of scissors to it and had gone to town. 

Understandably upset by his daughter’s distress, Jimmy decided to fix it the only way he knew how. He got her a fresh haircut to repair the damage and sent her back to school. But little did the Hoffmeyers know, their nightmare was just beginning, and poor Jurnee had a river of tears still left to sob. 

The young girl experienced another traumatic attack on her hairdo just days later. And this time, it hadn’t even been the same culprit. And the further Jimmy probed into just what had transpired, the more he became sure something was seriously amiss: the incidents had upset the whole family.

So what had actually happened to Junee on that first fateful school day? Whose hand was holding the scissors that had shorn his child’s locks? Jimmy wondered the same thing when his daughter came home from Ganiard Elementary School in tears with chunks of hair missing. He did what he could to comfort her, though. 

As told to news agency Associated Press in April 2021, when Jimmy asked Jurnee what had happened, she told him that the incident occurred on the schoolbus. Apparently the little girl had responded, “A student cut my hair. He laughed.” It was a nasty thing to do and kids can be cruel, but all Jimmy could do was deal with the fallout. 

After wrapping Jurnee in an embrace and telling her everything was better now, Jimmy told her what her schoolmate had done was wrong. He said, “No kid should cut your hair, okay? Don’t let them.” And of course, the little girl couldn’t walk around with such a disheveled appearance. But what could he do about that?

Jimmy couldn’t fix it himself, so he took Jurnee down to a beauty salon in an effort to repair the damage. The staff there decided on an asymmetrical haircut; it was stylish look and soon, no one would have been able to tell what had happened. But if Jimmy thought he’d essentially dealt with the problem at that stage, he was very wrong. 

Jimmy’s conversation with the school over the incident was, to him, the first red flag. He later told TV channel BNC News, “Of course, we were upset. She was [still upset] about the child. The only thing the school said was that they were going to look into the situation and contact parents, then get back hold of me about what was going to be done about it.”

The response didn’t exactly fill the Hoffmeyers with confidence, but they'd gone through the proper channels. What more could they do? So they sent Jurnee back to school with her new ’do while waiting for Ganiard Elementary to finish its investigations. And the details that turned up were interesting, to say the least. 

“They didn’t call me back when it happened, they called me back the next day,” Jimmy continued. “We found out that there was camera footage on the bus. The bus driver told us that the Ganiard school aid[e] was the one present while the first cut happened.” So why hadn’t she intervened on Jurnee’s behalf?

Well, the Hoffmeyers didn’t get an explanation for that. At least for a short while, that question was the last thing on their minds. And that’s because their beloved daughter had subsequently suffered a second attack on her hair. Her fancy styling was gone, and to her parents the short hack-job in its place looked almost as rough as the first. 

Jimmy recalled, “That Friday, I’m pretty sure it was March 24, was when my daughter came home with the other side chopped off. And then I was really mad, and at first I’m thinking another little kid did it.” But there was something different about this second cut that Jurnee’s parents couldn’t quite put their finger on. 

For one thing, since they had already reported the first incident, how could a second one occur so soon afterwards? And then there was the question of why this second incident seemed more calculated. The Hoffmeyers needed to have another little talk with their daughter, but she was so distressed they could hardly hear her through her tears.

Website World Lifestyle reported how this second conversation went. Jimmy asked Jurnee why she had let another kid near her with the scissors. “What did we tell you?” he asked. “I thought I told you no child should ever cut your hair?” But the answer his daughter then gave was probably the last thing the father had expected to hear. 

“But dad,” Jurnee responded, “it was the teacher.” Of course, the Hoffmeyers were stunned. Surely an adult teacher wouldn’t knowingly take scissors to their child’s head and shear off her new haircut intentionally? And yet that’s exactly what Jurnee was telling them. They couldn’t understand who would class that as acceptable behavior. 

Once Jimmy had recovered from his initial shock, he asked more questions and it turned out that his daughter had been referring to her “library teacher.” That member of staff’s name is Kelly Mogg, and it turned out she might not have been alone in the act. A teaching assistant called Kristen Jacobs was also allegedly involved. 

Jurnee’s father didn’t know how to react. Had the teachers really cut his daughter’s professional, salon-styled hair without permission? And if they had, why hadn’t they made any effort to explain the situation to the Hoffmeyer parents? Doubtless at this stage, Jimmy’s mental state would have veered between distress, rage and confusion. Still, determined to get to the bottom of what had happened, he called the school’s principal.

Yet what the principal apparently told Jimmy would have done little to assuage any grievance he might have been feeling on behalf of his daughter. He wasn’t offered an explanation. There was no apology. There’d be no action against the teachers involved. In fact, the principal had been apparently oblivious to any suggestions anyone had acted wrongly! The sum total of the school’s response to what had happened was adding a note to its files addressing the situation.

Jimmy revealed the details of this note in his interview with BNC News. He said, “The note they put out [stated] that my daughter asked the teacher to do this, to fix her hair. The note also stated that my daughter asked the child to cut her hair.”

Jimmy continued, “So they’re stating that the child cut my daughter’s hair, I got it fixed. And apparently my daughter still wasn’t happy with it, and asked the teacher to cut it again. [That’s] what I’m being told.” Jurnee’s traumatic experience didn’t end there, though. She still had to live with the haircut’s repercussions. 

The girl’s shredded hair was no longer salvageable, so she had to go to school with it in a state the following day. And as reported by World Lifestyle, you can bet that the local kids were quick to make fun of her for it. All this taunting brought Jurnee to tears again, so Jimmy made another call to the school.

In that call, according to World Lifestyle, the principal allegedly attempted to downplay the incidents. Did they think Jimmy was overreacting? Then the principal asked, “What can we do to make this go away?” That reported offhand remark was the final straw. 

The dissatisfied Hoffmeyers turned to social media for justice. They uploaded photographic evidence of what two of the school’s staff had apparently done to Jurnee’s hair, and it wasn’t long before the public started paying attention. Not only did the post go viral, but Ganiard Elementary School also found itself at the center of a media frenzy.

That’s around the time the school offered a statement, although it fell far short of the full apology the parents and some commentators felt the family were owed. The school admitted that “despite best intentions” staff decisions “showed a lack in judgement” and there was potential for disciplinary action. And with no full explanation for the staff members’ actions, the Hoffmeyers could only guess the truth behind Jurnee’s horrendous haircut experience.

Perhaps school staff didn’t approve of an asymmetrical haircut and took matters into their own hands? Others have alleged the cause is rooted in Jurnee’s biracial ethnicity. But Jimmy is just as in the dark now as he has been throughout, and he couldn’t understand how the situation had been allowed to escalate in the manner that it had. 

“I don’t want to be the person to make assumptions,” Jimmy told BNC News, “because I don’t know what that teacher was thinking, honestly… But she wasn’t thinking, is the biggest thing… Once she had cut [Jurnee’s] hair and seen what it looked like, that’s when she should have, y’know, addressed me.” 

Jimmy continued, “Y’know, when she looked at it and saw how messed up it was — if she did it out of the kindness of her heart, she would have contacted the parents. Like, ‘All right, I messed up.’ Y’know, like, ‘We should talk about this.’” Aside from the principal though, there was one other person from whom the Hoffmeyers heard. 

The aggrieved dad said he’d also spoken to the school’s superintendent, who — to politely paraphrase his impression of them — had shown no interest in Jimmy’s views at all. So in the end the issue has ended up in the federal courts: a battle which is still raging. So if you’re wondering whether the staff did anything wrong from a legal standpoint, the answer has still to be decided. Still, the media has covered similar incidents before.

In 2017 a Canadian teacher came under fire for giving an autistic student a haircut, even after the boy’s parents had denied them permission. And in 2018 Californian teacher Margaret Gieszinger forcibly cut a student’s hair and was charged with six counts of criminal misdemeanors. The offenses included battery, assault and cruelty to a child. 

As previously mentioned, the local education authorities are currently embroiled in a court case over the incident. Jimmy’s suing both the school district and the Ganiard Elementary School staff involved for $1 million, alleging possible racial discrimination and the district’s failure “to properly train, monitor, direct, discipline, and supervise their employees.”

Violation of the 14th Amendment, intentional infliction of emotional distress and assault and battery are among the charges. And meanwhile although the federal case’s verdict is yet to be determined, The Mount Pleasant Public Schools Board of Education has already concluded its own investigation. It admonished the staff responsible. 

According to website Michigan Live, the library teacher who actually cut Jurnee’s hair is on “last-chance” employment, meaning if she slips up again she will likely lose her job. In 2021 the website quoted the board as saying, “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.”

The board’s statement continued, “In addition, Superintendent Verleger has recommended and the board has accepted written reprimands for two additional MPPS employees who were aware of the incident but did not alert the student’s parents or the administration.” Still, the Hoffmeyer family’s ordeal hasn’t ended yet. They’re reportedly experiencing backlash from the wider Mount Pleasant community, too.

Christina Laster, an advocate for people of color who set up a Go Fund Me webpage for the Hoffeyers, elaborated more on the subject. “[The Hoffmeyers] have also been met locally with anger, unfairness and a lack of compassion because of their advocacy efforts for #JusticeForJurnee,” she wrote. And with that in mind, Jurnee’s family are trying to move away from Mount Pleasant to be somewhere they’ll find, well, more pleasant. 

Laster has set a target of $10,000 to provide the Hoffmeyers with the means to both relocate and provide homeschooling for their children. Until then, Jurnee is attending a different school. Sadly, there have been some knock-on effects for the little girl, as Jimmy revealed in a Facebook interview with Christina and the Wise Society in April 2021. 

Jimmy said, “She has a therapy session — or an evaluation, I guess you would call it — this Thursday. And from there, they were already saying they were going to do it, because they’d already heard… what had happened before I could finish the conversation with them. That’s how far it already had spread.” 

Jimmy also said in the Facebook interview that looking back, there had been some warning signs even before the haircutting incident. “Jurnee was already getting pressured about her hair being a certain way already,” he informed. “Jurnee said multiple times that her teacher was trying to fix her hair or style it for her. And even that I feel is out of line.” 

That’s why Wise Society is fighting to reintroduce a law called the Crown Act, which protects against hair discrimination. “No one should be punished for what naturally grows out of their body, and that is a part of their DNA,” Christina said. And few would dispute that protecting and preserving personal freedom is a good thing.