MONAHANS, Texas — Members of the Monahans community came together Tuesday night to discuss issues they are having with their school district regarding hair. The State of Texas passed the CROWN Act into law on September 1st that essentially prevents a school district's ability to impose a hair policy on students with protected hairstyles due to their racial heritage.
Discussions really centered on frustrations and what the community can do about them. While their fight is focused on the hair policy, the hope is to better Monahans-Wickett-Pyote ISD, or MWPISD, as a whole.
Hair is grooming controversy in Monahans.
“That’s really our concern now is ‘how can you be compliant with this new act and not make changes?’," said Rebekah Kines, a concerned Monahans parent.
With the CROWN Act now in place, parents are worried the school district’s hair policy is violating it.
“We feel like it does, because if the CROWN Act says that it protects certain hair styles, you can’t say ‘yes, but this,’ and so what the district is currently saying is that ‘yes they can wear their hair certain ways — the students can wear their hair certain ways — however, they can’t be past their collars or they have to still fall within the current grooming standards," Kines said.
Kines is no stranger to this fight, having gone through it with her son the past several years by filing grievances with the school district.
“They’re not easy to find and they’re not easy to understand, and so tonight I wanted to let people know that I’ve done it, I’ve gone through those steps, I got all the way through the third level — even though I’ve never received a response to my third level — I did get through it and that I can help them go through those steps as well," Kines said.
With the CROWN Act in place, real change is wanted.
“Our big-picture goal is to be able to have open communication with our school district and to have change that makes our school campus and codes more diverse, so that they’re not so taxing on parents and on students," Kines said.
It’s about those students and, ultimately, their education.
“The goal is to have students in classrooms and learning, and every day that a student is not in a classroom, their education is falling further and further behind," Kines said. "So, I don’t understand how they can take a student out of a classroom and send them to in-school suspension or completely suspend them from school because of a haircut.”
Kines noted that students already have enough to worry about at school than to have their hair be another concern. NewsWest 9 reached out to the superintendent of MWPISD for any comment on this hair discussion, but did not hear back.