While I agree with your assessment of the mom, I gotta say that hippy hair and afros and even shaved heads all are about “attention”.
It’s also possible the kid saw it and said “COOL! MOM I WANT ONE!” and the mom found no reason to stop it. An finding a public school to be out of line on it’s control isn’t exactly at odds with a lot of people on this forum.
Looking at the pic, he’s got a conservative (socially) haircut. It just happens to be a conservative mohawk.
Of course - when was that picture taken? Was it after he was sent home? The haircut was described as “spiked”, yet the photo shows it pretty well combed down. Couldn’t be a case of media manipulation, now could it?
I am curious what it looked like when he got to school.
And by the way - we have several students with long “hippy hair” as I call it. The vast majority make no big deal whatsoever about their hair - and just like it that way. It is not a distraction.
A child walks on campus with a spiked mohawk and I guarantee it will cause a disturbance (because that is the intent).