"Student gets suspended from school for the color of her hair"

Once again, whilst "doing homework," I have come across something that I feel compelled to share. I have the title of this post quoted because that was the tweet that I saw on my timeline from @HuffingtonPost. Overall, it is a very short article (the majority can be seen from the screen capture above), and I went to read the article because I had a fairly immediate (negative) emotional reaction to the headline—as the Post intended, I'm sure!

I think what was also intended was that I, as a viewer, should feel obligated to defend this girl and be amazed (in a bad way) by the seemingly senseless intolerance of Belton Middle School.

But I stopped to think about this knee-jerk reaction, and I found myself annoyed towards that way I reacted as well as towards Sargent's situation described in this article. A dress code is something that is usually quite well-defined in a school, and is something that you sign-on for when you enroll to that school. So do the Sargents have any right to be making this big publicity stunt (whether or not the media coverage was intentional could be argued)? Do I, therefore, have any right to have any negative feelings towards the school? I am inclined to think not. 

Now, for full disclosure, I did also make some assumptions while reading this article. For one, when the term "dress code" was used, I immediately imagined those white-shirt-black-skirt kinds of dress codes, and therefore, I also assumed that the school as private. In such a case, I stand by the comments above. However, after a bit of digging, I learned that Belton Middle School is indeed a public school, and the term "dress code" in this case is just referring to the general rules that the school sets for what is and is-not appropriate for the school day. With this actually being that case, I am leaning towards retracting my statement.

What do you guys think? Does the fact that a school is public or private have any effect on how whiny students/parents can being about certain situations? Or even just this situation in particular?

Oh, and if you want to see the full, original article, clicking the screen capture at the top of this post should bring you where you want to go.