Durham Public Schools OKs dress code changes, settling hats and hoodies debate
Students attending Durham Public Schools will have more freedom in what they wear in the next school year after the board approved a new dress code Thursday night.
The school district’s new dress code largely reduces prior restrictions on student outfits. It allows fitted pants, exposed midriffs, bra straps, underwear waistbands, halter tops and more at school.
However, it will not allow students to wear hats and hoodies following debate at the board’s June 9 work session. Instead, the new dress code includes explicitly permitting religious head and face coverings, as well as natural and culturally affirming hairstyles including braids, locs and Bantu knots.
The dress code was passed Thursday without any additional board member debate or comments from the public.
The proposed section allowing hats and hoodies was struck from the final proposal following feedback from district faculty and administrators, said DPS Chief of Staff Tanya Giovanni. The final guidelines did not clarify whether students will be allowed to wear doo-rags and bonnets to school.
During the policy review process, some within DPS were concerned that it would be hard to identify students with raised hoods or assess whether they were engaged with the class, Giovanni said at the June 9 work session. Meanwhile, the Superintendent’s Teacher Advisory Committee expressed concerns that banning hoods advanced damaging stereotypes about Black students in particular.
At the June 9 meeting, board members said the new code aims to match what students already wear on their own, and to impose neutral language so that specific rules are not disproportionately enforced based on students’ racial and/or gender identity.
In a particularly widespread example, board members are looking to protect students who identify as female for being frequently disciplined for the length of their skirts, and from being pulled out of class to go change at higher rates than their male counterparts, board chair Bettina Umstead told The N&O last week.
For schools in summer session, the changes will be implemented immediately. The majority of DPS schools will enforce the new dress code starting in September, and a wide variety of school staff members will receive training on how to enforce the dress code. Principals may also conduct a voluntary dress code refresher training in the spring.
Dress code promotes equity
The new code, which has been in the works since 2019, was written in consultation with DPS principals as well as with advisory committees of both teachers and high school students district-wide, the N&O previously reported.
The proposed changes were inspired in large part by a 2016 model dress code created by Portland NOW, which then-Portland NOW president Lisa Frack told The N&O was intended to ensure dress codes impacted all students equally, preventing inequitable exposure to school discipline systems based on a student’s gender or racial identity.
Since first proposed, the final dress code was amended to specify that tank tops cannot be backless, and that some courses might have special dress code requirements based either on maintaining physical safety or teaching career preparation.
The final dress code also notes that DPS assumes students’ outfits have been approved by their parents before school, putting responsibility back on DPS parents and guardians to understand and enforce dress code standards.
The new dress code continues to prohibit clothing depicting certain subject matters, including violence, banned substances and profanity, or which reference offensive material that could be intended to intimidate other students on the basis of race.
At Thursday’s meeting, dress code changes were not on parents’ minds. Some who spoke to the board focused on the board’s plan to improve support systems for LGBT+ students, while others discussed support staff salaries and access to the district’s after-school care programs, where waitlists are currently long.
Thursday’s meeting was the final session for two school board members: Mike Lee, who represents District 1, and Frederick Xavier Ravin III, who represents Consolidated District B.
At next month’s meeting, Emily Susanna Chavez will begin her term representing District 1, while Millicent Rogers will start as the representative for Consolidated District B.
This story was originally published June 23, 2022 at 8:42 PM.
