Girl Shaves Her Head To Support Friend With Cancer, Gets Suspended For Dress Code Violation Then Let Back In
One of Kamryn Renfro’s closest friends, Delaney Clements, has cancer — neuroblastoma, to be specific. Clements had just begun chemotherapy, and Renfro, 9, wanted to show her support for her friend who had been battling the illness for years. So she shaved her head. The school didn’t like it.
Renfro’s school, Caprock Academy in Grand Junction, Colo., prohibits in its dress code girls from shaving their heads, requiring their hair instead to be “neatly combed or styled.” When Renfro arrived at school on Monday with no hair to be neatly combed or styled to speak of, administrators took her out of class.
“I was really excited I would have somebody to support me and I wouldn’t be alone with people always laughing at me. I would at least have somebody to go through it all,” Clements told Fox affiliate KDVR in Grand Junction. And despite pleas from Renfro’s mother to the school board, explaining her daughter’s intentions, Caprock didn’t budge.
But as is the case with most hardline stances, the school’s decision soon fell to boatloads of negative press, and in a hurry. By Tuesday night, the board of the charter school realized the error of its ways and put overturning the decision to a vote. In the end, a 3-1 vote in favor of readmitting Renfro without a wig and amending the policy won out.
Renfro was even allowed back as early as Tuesday. “She got up, got ready, and held her head high as she walked into her classroom this morning,” Renfro’s mother, Jamie, wrote on her Facebook page. “To say her dad and I are proud, is a total understatement.”