An eighth grader in Indiana was sent to the principal’s office for refusing to take off his hat. “I sat down with him and asked him why and what was going on. He said he just got his haircut and didn’t like the way it looked. He thought his hairline looked a little funny,” says Jason Smith, principal of Stonybrook Intermediate & Middle School in Warren Township. So Smith made a deal with the student: He would cut the boy’s hair if the boy agreed to go back to class.
“I’ve been cutting hair most of my life,” Smith says. “I played college basketball cut my teammates’ hair before games, and I’ve been cutting my son’s hair for 17 years.” The student agreed, and Smith retrieved his barbering tools from home to clean up the boy’s hairline. The boy’s mom, Tawanda Johnson says Smith “handled it very well to keep him from getting in trouble at school” and school police Officer Lewis Speaks Sr. praised Smith as a “great leader.”
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