Posted on 06/05/2005 1:12:59 PM PDT by BenLurkin
As the weather warms up across the Antelope Valley and the end of school looms, high school officials are seeing first hand if the district-wide dress code created one year ago can stand the summer heat. The policy aims to keep students from wearing sagging or baggy pants, bare midriffs, flip-flops, short skirts, backward hats, body piercings that could be safety hazards, and anything deemed "gang apparel."
Footwear has been the biggest grievance so far, according to students, teachers, and administrators from several campuses.
The dress code says: "All students are required to wear appropriate footwear for school. Flip-flops, show thongs and slippers are inappropriate footwear."
The word "appropriate" is the sticking point, administrators say. The regulation, the first listed on the dress code, is the most vague part of the policy. Campuses generally ban sandals lacking a strap around the heel, taking cue from the flip-flop prohibition.
"One little glitch in the policy isn't bad," said Barbara Willibrand, the assistant superintendent who led the committee that crafted the district dress code.
Otherwise, most say the policy is working, although administrators and security personnel admit they have difficulty policing student populations nearing 3,500. Most students interviewed said they barely notice the code, which prohibits certain kinds of dress but doesn't mandate any particular style or colors.
Willibrand noted that the new dress code did not change the district's policy toward gang dress, which was banned before and remains so. The sheriff's gang unit updates school officials on the latest trends. The dress code is "a fluid document" in that regard, Willibrand said, recalling that the district outlawed trench coats after the 1999 shooting at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo.
Before dress codes were unified across the district's high schools in September, each campus had its own policy and enforcement guidelines.
Lancaster High was by far the most strict, with a code that resembled a school uniform. Students could wear only school colors - red, white and blue - and only solid colors. The school eased its rules this year, adopting the district-wide plan.
"The students were happier with (the new code)," said Todd Zucker, a vice principal at Lancaster. "We found that it's easier to enforce when we have the same dress code throughout the district."
Administrators, on the other hand, were sorry to see the old dress code go.
"There's a lot of us who miss the old dress code," Zucker said. "It was a lot easier to see if someone (was not wearing) blue or red shirts."
District Trustee Donita Winn said the school board was still behind the policy.
She recalled being on campus before the dress code was unified, and seeing a girl wearing a tube-top barely four inches wide.
"That meant a lot of chest was showing, and a lot of stomach was showing," Winn said. "This is not appropriate for school."
Construction workers at one school were "ogling at the girls," she added, creating a further distraction.
Administrators often say students should be wearing clothes appropriate for school, not beach attire. Nor should they mimic MTV, one said.
One of Winn's daughters is a senior in the high school district, and the trustee admitted that shoes were the biggest difficulty.
"When my daughter said, 'Mom, I can't find sandals with backs on them,' I decided we'd go out to look," Winn said. The shopping experience was enlightening, if unsuccessful.
"I kept saying, 'These don't look bad,' and I'd get a bunch of turned-up noses," she said. "Normally, if they (sandals) have a back on them, they aren't attractive to that age group. I understand where they're coming from."
Winn's two daughters attended New Vista Middle School, in the Lancaster District, which still has a school uniform.
"I was the parent at the podium at the school board saying I did not like uniforms. I was totally convinced it would ruin my daughters' creativity and their individuality," she said. But her view changed once the school year started.
"I became a convert. It became an amazing thing. Uniforms are much cheaper than buying new clothes for your kids at school. My girls took maybe 10 minutes in the morning to get dressed."
Students at New Vista can wear only navy blue slacks or skirts and a white collared shirt.
"It got tremendously expensive when they went to high school," Winn said. The new high school dress code, however, was no more or less expense than what her daughters were wearing anyway.
"I'm not pushing a uniform," Winn added.
The principal of Quartz Hill High, Brett Neal, said every teacher should help enforce the policy, not just the school's security staff.
Students who violate the dress code face progressively stringent punishments, starting with a warning and ending with suspension or expulsion in extreme cases.
"If we can catch kids in the parking lot, we tell them to go home and change," he said. "If they're in violation, we're not going to just warn them and send them on."
Students are not allowed to attend class wearing improper attire, Neal explained. Enforcers often call parents to bring a change of clothes for their student.
Neal said most violations at his campus come from girls with their stomachs showing and boys wearing sagging pants or non-Quartz Hill High hats.
The school's head of security, Ron Jennings, tries to take a diplomatic approach to enforcement, but he doesn't cut students any slack, either.
On a Tuesday morning while most students were in class, Jennings watched a few teenagers move between classrooms. Spotting a male student with the brim of a hat poking out from under a hooded sweatshirt, and Jennings stopped the youth to check his apparel.
"Young man, is that a QH hat?" he called out, using the school's initials.
The teen pulled back the hood, shaking his head at the question. The hat was solid black, against the code.
"Then take it off," Jennings told him. The student complied and returned to class.
Jennings could have confiscated the hat, and he could have come down harder on the student, but he chose not to. Respect goes both ways, the security director explained.
"I don't snatch anything off a kid's head," he said. "There's no need to be confrontational."
An informal survey of students leaving Palmdale High recently found no clear consensus about the dress code among teenagers.
"It doesn't bother me," said Mike Atanante, a sophomore who wore a black hooded sweatshirt and matching jeans on a cloudless day when the temperature topped 90 degrees.
One ninth-grade girl wearing a T-shirt and jean skirt objected to being told how to dress.
"You can't wear nothing," said the student, who declined to give her name. Students would rather wear "little shirts, and short skirts," she said.
Karla Dodley, a sophomore, said the dress code had changed little.
"People still wear whatever," she said. "A lot still wear flip-flops."
Her biggest objection: the hat rule. "We have to buy their (the school's) hats," Dodley said, admitting she had been cited three times for improper head wear.
Environmental Science Teacher Tim Klein said the code needs to be enforced.
"The issue of flesh needs to be addressed," he said, treading a diplomatic line while speaking to a reporter in front of Dodley, one of his former students.
Klein said safety drives his concern over student dress, since his class has an extensive lab component.
"We do have a lot of hands-on stuff," he said. "Certain types of clothes do get in the way."
Slippers? Now you know that they had to write this in because somebody was actually doing it. I'm trying to picture the kid who wears slippers to high school.
Next they'll ban pajamas.
I live next to a school in the Antelope Valley. Yes, some of the "I wanna be a welfare mamma" girls were wearing pink fluffy slippers to school.
That sounds like a nice look, and one that will fulfill its promise. I guess it's good to have goals.
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