“It’s a trade-off,” said one board member, Gary Bingham, an insurance agent, in an interview. “Do the parents value his education more than they value a 4-year-old’s decision to make his own grooming choices?”

Image Taylor Pugh in the glare of the news media on Monday. Credit... Ben Torres/Dallas Morning News, via Associated Press

The boy’s parents, Delton Pugh and Elizabeth Taylor, have argued that it is unfair to punish Taylor for his longish locks; it suggests, they say, that the district cares more about appearances than education.

“I don’t think it’s right to hold a child down and force him to do something,” Mr. Pugh, a tattoo artist, told The Associated Press. “It’s not hurting him or affecting his education.”

The parents rejected a compromise proposed by the board under which they would braid his hair and pin it up.

Since Nov. 24, when his principal decreed that Taylor’s hair had grown too long, the boy has been sent to the library to study alone with a teacher’s aide. “They kicked me out of that place,” Taylor told a reporter on Dec. 17. “I miss my friends.”