Mother upset after daughter gets henna tattoo at school

HOUSTON – A local mother is outraged by what she found on her 7-year-old daughter's body after she came home from school. The woman tells us her child received henna tattoos without her permission.

"Somebody tattooed my daughter without my permission," Tammy Samour said.

She was shocked when she picked up her daughter after school Monday.

"I asked what that was, and she said, 'Henna.' And I said, 'What is henna?'" Samour said.

Her daughter's hands were covered with an intricate brown design, known as a henna tattoo. The second-grader got the tattoos during a lesson on different cultures at Ed White Elementary School.

"Learning about culture is awesome, but I don't want it tattooed on my daughter, it is not our culture," Samour said.

The school did send an email as part of a weekly agenda to parents, informing them of the activity that would explore cultures from Spain, the United States, Australia, Israel and India. And in parenthesis, the email says, "will be doing henna."

"I didn't see the email, my husband did, but we didn't know what henna was," Samour said.

She said for the last two days she and the teacher have scrubbed her daughter's hands with nearly every cleaning product they could find.

"Especially that Christmas is next week. We have family photos, opening presents, church, and she is going to be wearing that on her hands throughout the holiday," Samour said.

The school district said they will take additional steps to inform parents in the future.

"We certainly will do a better job in the future to make sure that parents are informed of what this is and how long it will take, and again we regret that this family is upset about it," Elaina Polsen, Clear Creek Independent School District director of communications, said.