Zach has been growing his ponytail for three years, but it was only this fall that the Bastrop school district revised its dress code to forbid boys from letting their hair grow below the collar. When ordered to cut his hair two months ago, Zach pleaded with his parents, Stanley and September Toungate. "Don't make me do it," he begged. So they didn't. "We told him we were with him," says his mother, 29. Now the Mina Elementary third grader is confined to what school officials call an "alternate education setting"—a converted storage area, 10 by 13 feet.
September believes the isolation has affected her son emotionally. "[After school] Zach doesn't want Stanley or me to get far from him," she says. "He comes and sits in our laps or right next to us." Zach has had nightmares. "I dreamed I was in that room," he says. "It was closing in on me. It crushed me. It killed me."
The school board and a state district court have ruled against the Toungates' claims of sexual discrimination. The family is waiting for a date to be set for the next round, which will be before the Texas Third Court of Appeals. "We are dealing with a constitutional issue," says attorney Beall. Meanwhile Zach spends most of each school day alone, joined occasionally by a student doing detention. Recess is taken alone, and he is taught, alone, by substitute teachers. "We are doing everything to provide for Zach's education," says school district superintendent Paul Fleming. Still, he adds, "rules and regulations must be followed."
"The school board says the dress code reflects society," says Zach's mother. "But the society I live in says it's socially acceptable for a man to have long hair. I offered to pin his hair up so the tail wouldn't show or touch his collar. I offered to put it over his ear. I even offered to buy a wig to hide it." Fleming wasn't won over. "Kids are active," he says. "It just will not work."
Zach's father—a 40-year-old mechanic who used a wig to hide shoulder-length hair in his Navy days—cut off his own ponytail in October to show Zach that it needn't be such a big deal. "[I told him] long hair doesn't make you the person you are," he says. "Short hair or long, you are who you are."
"All he has to do is say the word, and we'll cut that ponytail," says his mother. "But that's his decision to make." Zach already seems to have made up his mind. "I've been growing this for three years," he says. "I like it."
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
