An inside look at how this Gastonia teen’s singing gigs got her kicked out of high school

Seventeen-year-old Gastonia country singer Bailey Griggs has certainly seen some unexpected benefits after being expelled from her high school this month, for failing to meet its “expected standards of conduct.”

For instance, when the inaugural Field & Stream Music Fest announced a week ago that Griggs was being added to an October bill headlined by country stars Eric Church and Lainey Wilson in Winnsboro, S.C., the first four words of the news release’s subject line were, “From Expulsion to Stardom.” And, in fact, a festival spokeswoman indicated to The Charlotte Observer that organizers had reached out to invite her to perform only after seeing news reports about her dismissal.

But Griggs — who was dropped as a student by Cramerton Christian Academy on July 1 for “‘attending night clubs or bars,’ and ‘attending gatherings with alcohol or drugs present’” — wants to make something abundantly clear.

“I did not try and get kicked out of my school my senior year for publicity.”

In the wake of the school’s decision, rendered in an email to her mother Jennifer Griggs on July 1, Griggs says she’s heard from supporters commending her for capitalizing off of the exposure and from detractors criticizing her for exploiting all the attention.

According to Bailey, neither group has it right.

“If I really wanted to boost my career, I wouldn’t have even went to the school. Just because I would have been focusing on my career,” says the teenage singer, as she sits on the living-room sofa in her grandmother’s Gaston County home. “I went to the school to ground myself and do normal things.”

Why, then, has she been participating in interviews with various media outlets, including this one? Her mom can actually explain it best.

First, though, a little more background:

Bailey Griggs started attending Cramerton Christian, a small K-12 private school with a student body of only about 350, as a seventh-grader. At the time, she had already been pursuing a career as a singer and an actress for a couple of years. And because her family had made those endeavors a priority, Griggs was enrolled through a “HomeSchool Bridge” program that allowed her to study partially online while attending multiple classes in-person. Doing so enabled her to participate in the school’s athletics programs and extracurricular activities, and to be around other kids.

The family says the school was aware from the start that Bailey was a singer who gave live performances. The Griggses also say they had indeed been furnished with a copy of Cramerton Christian’s student handbook, and had signed it. But they say Bailey has since been performing for years, openly, at venues where alcohol was served. The school, they say, never had warned Bailey or her parents before notifying them of her expulsion this month.

When contacted by the Observer this week, Cramerton Christian administrator Donna Bowman replied via email by writing, “The HomeSchool Bridge program has standards that we require all students to abide by. We do not enroll students who don’t meet those standards.”

Bowman said in a follow-up message that the school could not discuss specific students due to privacy concerns.

So the Griggs family is left to wonder: Why did the school apparently have no issue with Bailey’s gigs until recently? And since she wasn’t consuming alcohol or using drugs, couldn’t it have issued a warning or initiated a conversation before kicking her out?

‘For her, that was her therapy’

It wasn’t easy for Bailey to find the right school for her. In fact, when she was younger, it wasn’t easy for Bailey to go to school at all.

While at a Gastonia charter school that she attended from kindergarten until the middle of fourth grade, she suffered from crippling separation anxiety. As her mom Jennifer describes it, “when we would try to take her to school, she would be crying, pulling my clothes — like, we physically could not get her into the classroom. It was that severe. She was making herself physically sick. ... We were at a loss.”

Her parents had her try a couple of other schools for the remainder of fourth and all of fifth grade. Then for sixth, they home-schooled her full-time. None of those situations were quite the right fit, particularly the latter, because of the absence of interaction with other kids.

But during that time frame, Bailey also discovered a love for the performing arts.

It started when she was about 8 years old, after she saw a marquee sign advertising auditions for a production of “The Wizard of Oz” outside of Gaston School of the Arts (which is not a traditional educational institution but rather a nonprofit that offers after-school programs). Her mom signed her up, and once Bailey got involved it became clear that 1) she had potential as a performer and 2) she had a good singing voice.

Things escalated quickly.

By age 10, she had an acting agent — who almost immediately helped her score back-to-back bit parts in a pair of lesser-known TV series — and had landed an opportunity to sing in the “Amateur Night” showcase at New York City’s famed Apollo Theater. Asked who was really making the decisions i n the beginning, Jennifer Griggs concedes Bailey was too young to understand the entertainment business but insists that her daughter “took the lead. My husband and I, we don’t sing, we don’t play instruments, we don’t have anything musical about us. We were just following and helping her along the way, making sure that whatever she’s doing, she’s safe.”

In any event, Bailey and her family say, the beginning of her life as a performer coincided with the end of her struggles with anxiety.

“The only thing that I can think is whenever I started actually performing and singing ... I always got to play another part,” Bailey explains. Adds her mom Jennifer: “I think for her, that was her therapy. The anxiety just completely disappeared.”

By the time she started seventh grade at Cramerton Christian, she was writing her own songs — and had already performed multiple times in establishments that sell alcoholic beverages, including the Apollo. Bailey and her family had seen the rule, but ... well, more on that in just a minute.

In short, Bailey and her parents would go on to love the balance the HomeSchool Bridge program offered.

Over the next five years, she continued cutting her teeth in a handful of small roles on TV and in movies; gaining experience working with music producers in North Carolina, Nashville and Los Angeles; performing live shows with her band in and around Gaston County as Bailey Marie (Marie being her middle name); and enjoying a mostly traditional school experience that allowed her in high school to join the cheerleading team, which she was excited to captain again in her upcoming senior year.

Bailey thought everything was going great. Right up until 2-1/2 weeks ago, when her mom called her and said she they needed to talk, immediately.

An unexpected letter, then a meeting

The family was just one day into a weeklong vacation in Myrtle Beach when the email hit Jennifer’s inbox.

“This letter is written to inform you that Bailey will not be eligible to attend HomeSchool Bridge classes at CCA for the upcoming school year,” Cramerton Christian’s administrator Donna Bowman stated.

“While we do not ‘police’ every student’s social media account,” the letter continued, “the school is often presented with situations or information that requires our attention. In those circumstances, a student’s social media presence may have a bearing on compliance with those standards.” It noted the section of the student handbook relating to nightclubs and bars, and alcohol and drugs, then stated: “Bailey’s social media and schedule of performances would indicate that Cramerton Christian is no longer a good fit for Bailey’s goals.”

(On June 30, the day before the email was sent, Bailey had posted a photo from a June 29 performance at Goldie’s , a live-music bar and restaurant on South Boulevard in Charlotte. She had also recently posted a promo for an August concert she is doing at Coyote Joe’s, a famed country-music nightclub on Wilkinson Boulevard.)

The first thing Jennifer did was reply to the email to request a meeting. The second thing she did was summon Bailey — who was elsewhere in the community, playing ping-pong — back to the house the Griggses were staying in.

When Jennifer showed her daughter the email, Bailey was stunned at first. Once it sunk in, the tears started flowing.

They both had a million questions. But the school didn’t respond, Jennifer says. After four days of waiting, she posted about Bailey’s expulsion on her personal Facebook page. Within hours, multiple friends of hers had tagged local media outlets or journalists they knew. Shortly thereafter, Jennifer says, the school replied to say they would meet with her to discuss its decision.

At the July 8 meeting, which Bailey did not attend, Jennifer says she argued her daughter has “been doing the exact same thing for five years” and that “not one time has (the rule) been enforced.”

On top of that, Jennifer says she tried to emphasize the wholesomeness and positivity of Bailey’s music, and all of the volunteer work her daughter does, at hospitals, in schools, with the Salvation Army. “Things like that, that the school didn’t see. They just want to focus on the fact that she’s out there performing in venues that have alcohol.”

She told administrators that for an aspiring singer, it’s the nature of making a name for yourself. “Where else are you gonna play besides restaurants that have bars? I mean, you can’t go to McDonald’s to play.” Plus, she says, “there’s kids here at the school that are going to Luke Combs or Taylor Swift or any of these concerts, and I promise you, the kids attending them are surrounded by people that are drinking alcohol and probably doing some type of recreational drug. And these kids are posting pictures on their social media of them at places like this.”

Jennifer says the school countered that the difference is Bailey — as the performer — “is the draw for people to come in there and purchase alcohol.”

The broader issue for Jennifer is the way it all was handled by the school. She wishes the message had been:

“‘Hey Bailey, you have grown as an artist and you are getting more publicity, and more of the world, they’re seeing that you’re doing this stuff. It’s a problem for us now. So you’re either going to have to make the decision to stop playing in venues and let your career stay on the down-low for a little while, or you’re going to have to leave the school.’”

“But they didn’t give her the chance,” Jennifer says, “to choose what she wanted to do.”

The school did admit in the meeting to handling the situation poorly, Jennifer says, and asked if Bailey would come in so they could formally apologize. Jennifer says the school did not, however, offer to reconsider its decision.

‘I hope the school does well’

Oh: As for all the interviews Bailey’s done in the wake of the school’s decision? Jennifer cops to them basically being her idea.

“We went to the beach having no clue this was going to happen. Then after I posted, and people were tagging all the news places,” they believed reporters would be contacting the school to get its side of the story. (But again, beyond the statement Bowman issued to the Observer, Cramerton Christian officials did not respond to phone messages and emails from the Observer.)

“So I told Bailey, ‘When we get back home, you’re going to have had a week to think about this. If you want to give your side of the story, then that’s totally up to you.’ I let her make that decision completely. ... And she did want to.

“But it’s been hurtful for people to say that she did this to boost her career. That’s crazy. Because this had nothing to do with that.”

At this point, though, Bailey is ready to move on.

She says she isn’t interested in a formal face-to-face apology from the school.

She says if the administration had presented her with an ultimatum, she most likely would have un-enrolled; she wouldn’t have walked away from the opportunity to open for former “The Voice” contestant Josh Sanders at Coyote Joe’s next month — especially since the concert’s sponsor, 96.9 The Kat, has been playing her anthemic 2021 song “Beautifully Broken” to promote her appearance.

And if, on the other hand, Cramerton Christian had chosen to reverse its decision after meeting with her mom ... Bailey probably would have declined that, too.

“Now, I feel like it would be so incredibly awkward going there, just because of everything that’s happened,” she says. “I’d always be the person everybody’s looked at and was like, ‘Oh, well, that’s that girl.’ ... So there’s no reason for me to really get involved with the school anymore. I will be going to the first basketball game to see my cheer team cheer. But other than that, I mean, I hope the school does well.”

Bailey says she’s still in the process of deciding where she’ll spend her senior year instead, but is intent on having a traditional school experience — as opposed to finishing via home-schooling — because she wants to have a prom, and get a yearbook and walk in a graduation with friends.

She’ll also, no matter where she winds up, keep chasing her musical dreams: At the moment, Mom says, Bailey is booked every single weekend through Christmas.