(CNN) – A Texas boy’s parents are furious after a teacher took a sharpie to their son’s head after he allegedly violated the school’s dress code with his haircut.
Juelz Trice is a shy, respectful kid, his parents say, which is why he didn’t talk back or resist when two staff members at Berry Miller Junior High School drew on his head with a marker.
“To hold my son against his will and color his hair, and they said they laughing while they’re doing it. That makes me even more mad. So like, my kid is a joke,” said his father, Dante Trice.
After showing up to school with a design cut on his head, Juelz says he was given two choices: either the permanent marker or in-school suspension.
His mother, Angela Washington says they would have taken care of it, but they were never notified.
“You should have been like, okay, we need to call your mother first to let her know first what was going on. No one did that at all,” she said.
The school district’s dress code says “extreme hairstyles such as carvings, mohawks, spikes, etc. are now allowed.”
But it does not give guidance on how to punish a student for violating the dress code.
Washington says the administrator behind the incident called her and said he shouldn’t have handled things that way.
“They were very apologetic, but it — it still happened. You know, for an adult, nobody should think that’s the correct way to handle a situation.”
The Pearland I.S.D. released a statement, saying in part: “a campus administrator mishandled disciplinary action” and what happened was not condoned by the district.
The administrator behind the sharpie situation is currently on administrative leave.
“What they done to my son was wrong and somebody needs to pay for it some type of way,” said Trice.
