We can only hope that with adequate correction, she will one day become an acceptable wife.

Administrators touching kids, ruler in hand, seeing clothing as "too sexy" is just plain creepy.

What would their reaction be if she showed up in a chador?

these last two days. ridiculous reasons for the students to get in trouble. maybe there is something up with that.

he was also telling me that the boys had to have supervision when the girls did not, and how unjust that was

so then, i brought up the other story he had just told me. he says, the funniest thing he had seen in his whole life.

i asked him, do the girls grab a friend and lift him to a hook and hook the underwear so the kid is hanging there? he had to laugh about that. well, no. (a friend who wanted it done. no bullying). this is middle school though.


maybe your daughter rolled the waist banned a couple times.

we dont need no education.... we always play that last day of school. is all over the stations.

Back in the '50s, I seem to remember myself and my friends "rolling" up the waistband of our uniform skirts the minute we got out of the building. I'm sure the kids of today have thought of the same thing. Not to say she was't treated unfairly, but adolescents do have a way of driving those in authority crazy. This is not a big deal and in the span of time, she'll laugh at the experience. Time to let our kids fight some of their own battles as a way to learn about life.

I went to Catholic school back then with those hideous uniforms. Yes, the girls rolled up the skirts, but the Nuns checked the waists. My Mom didn't like the idea of uniforms. I am short and thin. They looked stupid on me. Mom took up a hem on my skirts. She even measured how big the hem was supposed to be, and then cut the excess off before she hemmed it. The Nuns could not tell that the skirt was taken up. I certainly wasn't about to tell anyone my secret!

She has at times pushed just to see how far she could go with it, one day she even wore pajama pants to school and when the teacher asked her if they were pajama's she said no and got away with it.

She has been in the office many times with dress code violations that were nothing more than what you are saying. It is power hungary school officials that love to dominate the kids.

First of all, it's FLORIDA and HOT!!!! I have worked in public schools here from Title 1 to very wealthy. The Title 1 schools required uniforms; mostly khaki bermuda shorts (shorter than that girl's skirt) and a collared t-shirt. Docker type pants were allowed but the kids opted for shorts instead. They had their choice of either of these, or for girls, skirts which were pleated but were OVER the knee. Few girls wore the skirts, and the ones who did, wore their own shorts under the skirts.

The wealthy schools which didn't have uniforms? Oh, my! That was like a catalog out of Abercrombie. The girls wore short shorts, tank tops, flip flops, etc. The boys wore baggy cargo shorts, t-shirts, etc. The principal at that school would have expelled the entire school!!!!! However, the principals here let it slide. These were A+ schools and one was even a National Blue Ribbon school. Whatever works????

BTW, that principal wouldn't like how teachers, especially the women, dressed at these schools either. That girl looked more like what a TEACHER would wear around here.

If she didn't have that black bar across her eyes.

At an Amish or Muslim school that would be considered slutty.

But I disagree this is a case of "codes lacking strict rules." In fact, this is exactly the opposite. The school has a strict rule, and they enforce it -- even when it seems absurd to do so. From the article:

"My daughter was apparently told that the skirt's hem was half an inch (a little over a cm) too short."

The fact that the girl's outfit looks completely appropriate doesn't matter. The existence of the strict rule gives the people in authority the ability (or the responsibility) to enforce that rule. The school could have chosen to let this girl's too-short skirt slide, but you know how it is: Rules is rules.

Enforce the rule for everyone. Teachers and admin at my kids school seem to single out individuals and leave others alone.

It is the randomness of the rules that is bothersome in mho.

But I think these kinds of absurd outcomes seem to be inevitable with zero-tolerance policies.

I learned in junior high that the actions of some kids always warranted discipline while others were allowed to slide. In my school a kid who was a problem for other reasons would get slammed for dress code violations much more readily than generally well-behaved students. Smart kids were cut slack too.
The smart kids in fact figured this out and revolted one spring. Faced with the prospect of disciplining the majority of the kids in the top two tracks--and dealing with the wrath of their parents-- the admin amended the dress code to be a bit more lenient.

Once for wearing real short shorts, and the other for wearing jeans that had rips from the panty line all the way down. So her violations were fairly consistent. The one you show doesn't strike me as a violation of anything, unless you are at a catholic or fundy school.

are terrified of the students!

I had one daughter who insisted on wearing very short t-shirts. Her midriff was covered as long as she didn't raise her arms. I warned her that if she got nabbed, she was on her own. Her theory was that since she was otherwise well behaved and an excellent student, and since she was following two siblings who had excelled in high school, she was off the radar. Apparently, she was right!

I've been in the schools and I have a teen daughter in a public high school right now. I have seen it first hand on multiple occasions. There is the stated dress code and there is the one that gets enforced that day with THAT particular kid. Welcome to the real world. Similarly, there are the expected rules of behavior and there are the ones enforced for the select few. Can any of you honestly say you haven't seen inequality in the workplace or even in the rest of the world as well?

Maybe I'm just too much of a throwback to my conservative parents, but when we got to the point with our daughter that this kind of stuff was a potential issue (about third grade maybe--once they start to choose their own clothing on a regular basis...) we'd have the annual examination of the school policies and we'd talk about them at home. My policy has always been that if she got righteously busted for anything that was in the school policies it was gonna stand. Those would be the agreed on "rules of engagement" was how I phrase it. Anything outside of that, however, and I'd go to the mat for her.

Yes, I see kids wearing stuff that I think is probably outside the dress code, but I figure that it isn't up to me to narc anybody out. Plus, (and this is a big one for me) I honestly don't know if maybe what that kid has on that day is just about all that kid owns. We live in an area that is thought to be fairly stable economically, but there are still a lot of people who are struggling. I'd feel like a total shit if I pitched a fit about some of what I see kids wearing and I found out afterward that the kid was wearing one of his/her only two or three shirts.



Laura