Do student shorts cover mid-thigh? Wake schools hope they’ve found workable new dress code.

Wake County’s teachers and schools administrators could go from using the fingertip-length test to looking at whether shorts cover “mid-thigh” in determining what’s acceptable for students to wear on campus.

Wake’s current student dress code bans “excessively short” clothes, resulting in some schools requiring that shorts and skirts be longer than the fingertips of the students. The new proposed student dress code no longer talks about excessively short clothing, but would require students to wear clothes that stretch from their chest to the mid-thigh.

A Wake County school board committee agreed Tuesday to recommend the new student dress code. But it came after debate about whether the new wording would continue the problems that families of female students have in finding acceptable shorts.

“We can agree that mid-thigh isn’t perfect, but it’s at least a better standard than what we’re using,” said school board member Chris Heagarty.

The policy now goes to the full school board for approval. The goal is to get it in place for the 2019-20 school year.

North Carolina’s largest school system is working on changing a dress code approved in 2002 that lists 11 examples of items that are considered inappropriate, including exposed undergarments, sagging pants, excessively short or tight garments, bare-midriff tops, strapless shirts and attire that exposes cleavage.

Female students have complained that the current policy unfairly targets them, resulting in them being pulled out of class to change clothes.

The new policy sets expectations of what should be worn without getting into a lengthy list of banned items. The policy says clothing must cover front, back, sides and private parts and must not be see-through. Undergarments must be covered, but waistbands and bra straps are excluded.

“The expectation is of the workplace, what students would wear to their second job,” said school board member Christine Kushner, chairwoman of the policy committee. “This encapsulates that in a very simple way.”

School administrators said they added the wording about chest to mid-thigh after principals raised concerns that prior drafts of the new policy could have allowed students to walk around with bare-midriff tops.

“We added that to avoid the crop tops and in doing so reintroduced the language on length,” said Kathryn Chontos, interim assistant superintendent for student support services.

But several board members complained that clothing manufacturers don’t design shorts for girls that would be covered by the new policy, especially for students in elementary school.

“A lot of things that we hear from parents of female students is about the length of their shorts,” said school board member Lindsay Mahaffey. “While I appreciate that we’re not naming specific articles of clothing, to say from chest to mid-thigh then we’re back to measuring.”

Chontos said that the district can train elementary school staff about how to enforce the mid-thigh rule to ease concerns raised Tuesday.

School board member Roxie Cash said that the board needs to keep the mid-thigh wording to forestall complaints from the community. Cash said she’s already concerned that parents didn’t have a large enough say in developing the new policy.

“We can’t leave it totally open without bringing in a bigger population,” Cash said.

Heagarty argued that using mid-thigh is an acceptable compromise.

“Mid-thigh is still going to exclude a lot of clothing options, but it’s going to include more than what’s available than if we just say professional dress or the fingertip rule,” he said.

Board members said they expect the new code will still draw some complaints. But they said that the code is one they think the community can support.

“I believe that this policy does suggest high standards that our students can aspire to,” said school board member Bill Fletcher.

This story was originally published March 27, 2019 at 12:48 PM.