VOORHEESVILLE — Dog collars and pajamas may soon be banished from the classrooms and corridors of Clayton A. Bouton, along with thigh-high skirts and too-tight pants.

Depending on the school board’s decision next Monday, high-school and middle-school students may have stricter guidelines on what they wear to school next year.

Board members this Monday had varied reactions to a list of 13 prohibitions for personal appearance, drafted by a committee of school staff, students, and parents.
"The site-based team worked on this most of last year," said high- school Principal Mark Diefendorf.
"Part of the complaints before were things were general and not clear," said board President David Gibson.

The draft, posted on the district’s website at the board’s request, prohibits the wearing of gloves; hats; sunglasses; slippers, roller sneakers, or heels higher than three inches; dresses, skirts, shorts, culottes, and skorts that are above mid-thigh.

It also prohibits clothes that would impair health and safety such as dog collars, chains, safety pins, spikes, spiked jewelry, accessories or unnecessary ornamentation; tight-fitting Spandex-type pants, pants with side slits or holes above the knees, see-through pants, tights or leotards worn as outer garments; and shirts that do not cover the top of shoulders or that expose the midriff or undergarments.
Further, it prohibits tank tops, tube tops, mesh tops, sheer tops, halters, or bare midriff tops and declares, "No student is to be bare backed."

It also prohibits clothing symbolic of gangs or disruptive groups associated with threatening behavior, harassment, or discrimination; clothing and accessories that contain vulgar, derogatory, or suggestive diagrams, pictures, slogans or words; and clothing and accessories that promote alcohol, tobacco, or drug use or which display weapons or violence and which cause or are likely to cause disruption.

Enforcement

Board member Richard Brackett asked if the new dress code would also apply to the faculty and staff.
"They can and they should," said Superintendent Linda Langevin, "but it can’t be enforced."
"Legally it would not hold up," agreed Kathleen Fiero, president of the teachers’ union, "but I hope professionally, they would abide by it."
"I’ve got problems with that," said board member Kevin Kroenke, painting a verbal picture of a teacher on a warm "springy" day, wearing a backless sundress. He said teachers should be role models in a classroom.

Brackett also asked who would determine if a student were wearing sweat pants or pajamas.

There are kids that sleep in their blue jeans, said Gibson.

Diefendorf responded that administrators would decide if the clothing were causing a disturbance in the educational process, language he said came from the state’s education commissioner.

In the high school, he said, administrators would enforce the policy.
"In the middle school," he said, "they deal with it very quickly and effectively." If a girl is showing too much cleavage, he said, she’ll be given a T-shirt to wear or, if a boy is wearing pants that are riding too low, he’ll be told to hike them up.
The draft of the policy states, "Students who violate the dress code shall be required to modify their appearance...Any student who refuses to do so shall be subject to discipline, up to and including in-school suspension...for the day. Any student who repeatedly fails to comply...shall be subject to further discipline, up to and including out-of-school suspension."
"The last thing in the world I want to become is part of the clothes police," said Diefendorf, adding, "If the board wants it, I’ll do it."

Mixed reaction

Gibson said the board will take up the matter again when it meets next Monday.
"I’m a little unclear what we’ll do next week," said board member Paige Pierce. "I don’t know how many students are aware this is being discussed and voted on."
Diefendorf said that, as he requested, all social studies classes for sixth through 12th grade discussed the dress-code draft. One class, he said, "had a demonstration of gang garb and non-gang garb."

Many students asked for copies of the draft, he said.
"How did the students react"" asked Brackett.
Diefendorf said the reaction was mixed. "Some don’t like it; they would like to maintain their individuality," he said. Others, he went on, "could care less."

One of the big things, Diefendorf said, is the prohibition on head coverings; a lot of kids wear baseball caps.
Brackett asked if parents had challenged the code, and Diefendorf said that parents have said, "You can’t tell me what I can dress my child in."

Langevin said that, according to state law passed in 2001, even if parents object, the school has jurisdiction over students’ dress.
Pierce again said she wanted to have community and student input and she questioned the prohibition on "accessories or unnecessary ornamentation."
Diefendorf responded that the site-based committee had representatives from those groups and said on the "unnecessary ornamentation": "We’ve had students who wear dog chains and put spikes on their shoulder."

Gibson concluded that unanimity of students isn’t needed to vote something in.