MOBILE, Ala. — Families looking to trim their back-to-school budget can cross one expense off the list this year, courtesy of Remington College’s Cosmetology Department. The Mobile campus is once again offering free haircuts to kids ahead of the new school year through its long-running “Cuts for Kids” event.
Starting August 3 and running through the end of the month, cosmetology students will provide complimentary haircuts to students age 17 and younger. The event runs Monday through Thursday, with two windows each day: 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. to 9 p.m., giving families with busy schedules a chance to fit it in before or after school and work.
The dual windows are a deliberate design. The morning block serves younger children and families who prefer weekday-morning openings, while the evening stretch catches working parents and older students coming off practice or summer jobs — the two realities of an August schedule in a working family’s household.
A Mobile campus tradition
The program has become something of an institution at the Mobile campus, marking its 17th year in 2026. Few community programs last that long, and fewer still grow roots as deep as Cuts for Kids has: whole families have come through the clinic chairs over the years, with older siblings who once sat for back-to-school trims now bringing children of their own.
Remington College’s assistant campus president, Stephon Adams, discussed the tradition and what it means for local students during a recent local television appearance, describing the goal as helping kids “feel confident and prepared” as they head back into the classroom.
That framing — confidence as a school-supply — is the heart of the program’s appeal. A fresh haircut is a small thing with a visible effect on how a student walks into the first day of school, and for families watching every dollar in August, it is a small thing they no longer have to pay for.
Real training, real service
For Remington’s cosmetology students, the event doubles as hands-on training under instructor supervision, giving them real client experience while providing a genuine community service. Clinic work on live clients is the capstone of cosmetology training, and the August rush supplies it in volume: consultations, sanitizing, styling, and the customer-service rhythm of a working salon floor.
Students learn under licensed instructors who oversee every service, ensuring quality while letting the students exercise the judgment they will need in professional practice. Many graduates of the program have gone on to work in Mobile-area salons, and some cite the Cuts for Kids clinics as their first experience managing a full chair of back-to-back clients.
For families, it offers a way to check a routine but often pricey back-to-school errand off the list at no cost. A salon haircut for a child can run well into double digits, and multiplied across two or three school-age children, the savings from a free clinic appointment are real money in an August budget already loaded with fees, supplies and new clothes.
Booking ahead
Because the free haircuts are popular and appointment slots can fill up during the week-long stretches, the college recommends booking ahead rather than walking in. The event’s reputation after 17 years means demand reliably outpaces the chairs available on any given day, and walk-ins during peak late-August days can face long waits or full books.
Appointments can be scheduled by calling (251) 342-4848. Families are encouraged to book early in the month if they can — the August 3 opening week tends to have the widest availability, and securing a slot early also lets parents time the haircut closer to the first day of school, when it looks freshest in the classroom photos.
The clinic’s schedule — Monday through Thursday, 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. to 9 p.m., through the end of August — covers most family calendars, but officials note that the final week before Mobile County schools reopen is consistently the busiest. Parents who wait until the last days should expect limited slots.
The economics of back-to-school
Back-to-school costs have climbed in recent years alongside inflation in clothing, supplies and grooming services, making community-supported efforts like Cuts for Kids increasingly valuable for Mobile-area families preparing for the first day of school. National surveys of school spending consistently show families investing hundreds of dollars per child each August, and the burden falls hardest on households with multiple students or fixed incomes.
Against that backdrop, a free haircut is not just a courtesy — it is one fewer line item at a moment when every line item counts. Community programs that absorb those costs, whether through school districts, churches, nonprofits or college clinics, have become an informal safety net that stretches across the weeks before Mobile-area schools reopen.
Remington College’s Mobile campus has carved out its place in that network through the cosmetology department’s clinics, and the 17-year run of Cuts for Kids shows no signs of slowing. For the students in the chairs and the families in the waiting area, the event’s arithmetic works from both directions: the college’s trainees get the client hours their professional licenses demand, and Mobile’s kids get to walk into school looking sharp — with the money their haircuts would have cost still in their parents’ pockets.
The Mobile campus of Remington College is located in west Mobile, and the cosmetology department’s clinic space is set up each August for the event’s volume of young clients. Families with questions about eligibility — students age 17 and younger — or scheduling can reach the campus at (251) 342-4848 during the event’s Monday-through-Thursday windows.
What a visit looks like
Families arriving for a Cuts for Kids appointment find the cosmetology clinic transformed for the occasion: stations arranged for quick turnover, instructors circulating among the chairs, and students handling consultations with the same professional courtesy a commercial salon would offer. The atmosphere is lighter than a typical salon visit — children outnumber adults, the conversation skews toward first-day-of-school plans, and the college treats the month as much as a community event as a training exercise.
Services are limited to haircuts for students age 17 and younger, and families with several children can usually be handled in a single visit, which is part of the event’s efficiency. Parents wait steps away rather than in a separate lobby, and the college’s clinic schedule keeps the pace brisk without feeling rushed — a balance the students learn to manage as part of the training.
The supervising instructors treat each service as a teaching moment: students explain what they are doing, receive corrections in real time, and log the client work that counts toward their licensure requirements. By the end of August, the cosmetology department’s students have absorbed a month of client volume that no classroom simulation could replicate.
Seventeen years of community ties
Longevity has made Cuts for Kids more than an annual promotion — it has woven Remington College’s Mobile campus into the rhythm of the city’s school calendar. Local families plan around it, community groups refer families to it, and the college’s television appearance by assistant campus president Stephon Adams reflects how established the program has become in Mobile’s civic life.
The event also functions as an annual showcase for the cosmetology program itself. Families who come for a free August haircut see the students’ work firsthand, and the program has historically drawn enrollment interest from precisely those visits — parents who return in the fall to ask about training for themselves or their older children.
That loop — service, visibility, enrollment, graduates, more service — is how a 17-year community program sustains itself. The college supplies the space and the supervised labor; the community supplies the demand; and Mobile’s students get both a haircut and a glimpse of a professional pathway that begins, fittingly, with making people feel good about how they look.
For 2026, the message to Mobile-area families is the same as it has been since the program began: call (251) 342-4848, book early, and bring the kids in before the school year starts. The first day of school arrives whether or not the budget does — and thanks to Cuts for Kids, the haircut will be one thing families don’t have to stretch for.
The event’s August windows are designed around the reality that Mobile County schools open their doors in mid-August, meaning the first weeks of the clinic serve families getting ahead of the calendar and the final stretch serves those racing the first bell. Either way, the chairs stay busy Monday through Thursday, 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. to 9 p.m., through the end of the month.
Parents who have used the clinic in past years tend to return with the same advice for newcomers: book the moment the August 3 opening arrives, arrive a few minutes before the appointment, and bring all the school-age children at once. After 17 years, Cuts for Kids has the routine down — and so, increasingly, do Mobile’s families.