An 11 year old honor student, at the Mount Gleason Middle School in Sunland, California, was asked to leave class for her tights. The girl’s mother insists that her skin color had a role to play in it, but allegedly the teacher’s assistant who sent her daughter to the principal’s office felt like her tights gave the allusion that she wasn’t wearing any pants. Read more below.
SUNLAND, Calif. (KTLA) — A middle school honors student was dismissed from class for wearing a pair of brown tights that she was allegedly told too closely matched her skin tone.
Deja, 11, was sent to the principal’s office at Mount Gleason Middle School by a teacher’s assistant on Friday.
The assistant allegedly said the tights were too racy because their color made it appear Deja was not wearing pants.
“I felt discriminated against,” Deja’s mother, Yolanda Tunstill, told KTLA. “Shocked… like, I mean are you serious? I can’t believe this.”
“I can understand if they said okay, this type of material, this type of clothing,” Tunstill said.
She continued: “But for you to make a remark to state becasue the pants were brown and to make a remark about my daughter’s skin color… That was not right to me.”
The Los Angeles Unified School District denies Deja was dismissed from class because of the color of the tights.
The dress code at Mount Gleason specifically mentions that no sleepwear, loungewear or tights may be worn alone.
School policy does not allow students to wear tights to school.
“She wears them all the time, all the time,” Tunstill insisted. She said that 80 percent of her daughter’s wardrobe consists of tights.
“There has never been a problem before until she wore the brown ones, and then it became a problem,” Tunstill said.
The district sent a letter to Tunstill saying Deja was not asked to leave school and appropriate administrative action was taken against the teacher’s assistant.
Tunstill says that she plans to take legal action against the district.
