A furious mum in the US has blasted her first-grader’s school after they allegedly refused to serve her daughter lunch because she was wearing spaghetti straps.
Mum Harlie posted a video explaining how the school reportedly gave her daughter the cold shoulder for breaking the dress code, the New York Post reports.
“Update on my first-grader being refused lunch because of the spaghetti straps on her shirt,” said Harlie in the video, which has already racked up over a million views.
“Y’all aren’t going to like it, and I really don’t like it,” she continued.
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The video is a follow-up to her initial video detailing the incident which she captioned, “POV: You’re raising a first-grader in the South,” in reference to the Southern US, where they live.
Harlie said she had no idea the school didn’t allow spaghetti straps because she was in the hospital for ongoing medical issues at the time her daughter was admitted to the school, so her grandma handled all the forms.
Harlie didn’t deny the outfit is against the school’s rules, but she’s fuming over how the school decided to handle the faux pas.
“We broke the dress code, yes 100%, I went in there and told them my problem wasn’t the dress code,” Harlie said in the clip.
Harlie – who expected to speak to the school to come up with a solution that worked for all parties involved – is horrified by the school’s response.
“They got combative instead and I’m really disappointed,” she said.
She claimed one teacher tried to convince her that her daughter lied about being pulled out of lunch but that another teacher backed up her daughter’s version of the story.
A teacher also apparently lied about how long the child was pulled out of lunch, going so far as to say Harlie’s daughter was “walking too slow.”
“I believe my kid,” said Harlie.
“She doesn’t lie to me about stuff, not like this.”
Harlie asked the school for a dress code exemption form, which the school reportedly said no longer exists ever since mask mandates were lifted.
Harlie explained she’ll continue to allow her daughter to dress how she wants and if the school has a problem with it they should call her instead of denying her daughter food.
If the problem persists, Harlie threatened to pull her kid out of the school.
“Your answer to this is to pull her out of academics?” the mum said the school asked her.
“Yes that is exactly what I intend to do because if a teacher is too distracted by a 7-year-old’s shoulders to continue teaching I do not want her in that classroom,” she responded.
“Number two, if your solution is to starve her and shame her in front of her friends, yeah I’m about to pick her up,” she added.
Harlie said she’s currently searching for other schools in the area that might be a better fit for her family.
In a follow-up video, Harlie said she spoke to a lawyer who informed her it’s actually illegal to deny a child a meal at school.
Commenters on Harlie’s videos were quick to rush to her defence and back up the lawyer’s revelation.
“Dress codes are wrong and if the teacher is that distracted over your daughter’s shoulders and I would be questioning the teacher’s morals,” said one.
“Regardless of dress code being broken or not, it is illegal to refuse to give a student a meal/time to eat lunch,” said another.
“As a middle schoolteacher, I refuse to enforce dress code,” said a third.
This article originally appeared in the New York Post and was republished here with permission.