ORLANDO, Fla. — Administrators at a private school in Florida hope to talk one of their students into changing her hairstyle to make it less distracting in the classroom.
Vanessa Van Dyke has course, curly hair reflective of her ethnicity. The private school she attends has a dress code that states hair must be a natural color and must not be a distraction.
When Vanessa complained about teasing by other kids, she says the school told her she needed to change.
“It seems to me that they’re blaming her,” said Sabrina Kent, Vanessa’s mother. “A distraction to one person is not a distraction to another. You can have a kid come in with pimples on his face. Are you going to call that a distraction?”
“It’s puffy and I like it that way,” Vanessa told Orlando’s Local 6.
Vanessa said the school gave her a week to cut or shape her hair so that it wasn’t a distraction, but she doesn’t plan to change anything.
“I’m depressed about leaving my friends and people that I’ve known for a while. I’d rather have that than the principals and administrators picking on me and saying that I should change my hair,” said Vanessa.
After Local 6 in Orlando told Vanessa’s side of the story, Faith Christian Academy told Local 6 that it was hoping to talk to Vanessa about hair options to make it less of a distraction.
In a written statement to Local 6, administrators said they were not asking her to use products in her hair or to cut it, and would talk with her family over Thanksgiving break.
