Mom Calls for End to Father-Daughter Dance's “No Women Allowed” Policy

Grandparents take Alvarado girls to dance, but grandmother asked to leave dance

A Johnson County mother of two is pushing the Alvarado school district to drop its "no women allowed" policy for father-daughter dances.

Jennie Edwards, a single mother, said her daughters' grandmother was asked to leave a Valentine's Day Daddy Daughter Dance.

Edwards said the dance policy needs to be updated.

"It needs to be changed," she said. "We don't live in that kind of a world anymore."

Edwards, a single mother, had to work on Valentine's Day, so her parents drove an hour from home take the girls to the dance at Alvarado High School that benefits the junior-senior prom.

Her daughters, 7-year-old Emily and 5-year-old Madilyn, got all dressed up to go to the dance, their first dance.

"It was just a big deal," Edwards said. "It was a big deal for them."

But not long after the dance started, organizers told the girls' grandmother she had to leave. Rather than make her wait in the car alone, the girls and their grandparents all left the dance together.

"I was so upset the girls were upset," Edwards said. "It was such a big deal to them. They really wanted to be there. It was a big deal to them, and ... my heart broke for them, and there was nothing I could do; nothing."

"I'm both mother and father to these girls," she said. "Had I gone, I would have been asked to leave, too. And I'm not the only woman out there like this. These aren't the only two little girls out there like this. It's not fair."

Alvarado Independent School District Superintendent Chester Juroska said he plans to sit down with school principals to talk about changing the dance policy.

"If one person has their feelings hurt, I'm bothered by that," he said.

Juroska said the father-daughter only policy is "more trouble than it's worth" and that the district "probably ought to" revisit it.

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