The dress code says no satin bonnets or shower caps in the school building. It says nothing about scarfs or head wraps or what people choose to wear in their cars.
A satin bonnet is an item AA women wear to bed. Put a daytime scarf on if you are having hair issues. I am 100% behind the principal on this. I’m glad she is not allowing sleep bonnets in the school. It is a new school trashy look and too many younger people in the area walk around everywhere like this. She is not allowing the Walmart look in where she is trying to lift up the students.
btw - I live nearby and am in the area all the time. Old school moms would have been taught to never step out your front door with that thing on your head. It is very sad that the principal has to say it.
@TQfromtheU it did say no head scarves. I am pretty sure it specifically said no silk head scarves but I’m not seeing the letter on the district website now, perhaps it was taken down since I posted earlier.
ETA: if it didn’t specify head scarves, then I am also confused about why the mother wasn’t allowed in the building and police were called. I don’t see how she was breaking the policy by wearing a dress that went to her fingertips and a head scarf wrapped in her head (it was not a bonnet, but a scarf). I mean, I wasn’t crazy about the outfit but it followed the rules.
^^I thought I initially read “head scarves” as well and, if so, it was taken down. I was thinking about this overnight and, not only would that discriminate against those who wear a head covering for religious reasons but what about someone undergoing chemo/medical treatment that causes them to lose their hair and they elect to wear a head scarf? Anyway, no longer relevant if the phrase was removed. Like I said earlier…it’s a fine line…
“The parent dress code was issued the day after KPRC-TV (Channel 2) reported a parent attempting to enroll her daughter at Madison High School had been turned away because of how she was dressed. The mother, who was wearing a T-shirt dress and headscarf, said the school called police to remove her from the property when she demanded to see the parent dress code she had supposedly broken. Outley Brown’s memo detailing a parent dress code is dated the next day.”
It doesn’t mention the length of the dress or even, heaven forbid, curlers.
I cannot believe she was unable to register her daughter for school because she was wearing a T shirt dress and a headscarf. Period.
She was in a public school, one supported by her tax dollars. Her reason for being there was to register her daughter, to enable her daughter to receive an education. She was prevented from doing so because someone else objected to her attire.
The woman complaining about being kicked out was wearing a head scarf and a “t-shirt dress.” She says the dress was objected to as being too short/inappropriate, and the scarf was worn to protect her hair (not sure if there were curlers under it or not), not for any religious or health reasons. IMO, it is not hard to distinguish a religious headdress or chemo cover from a scarf tied over a head full of curlers.
Agree that if what the article says it true, it was excessive. But we only heard one side of the story. Was the police called to remove her because of her outfit or because she began making a scene? Not clear from that article.
Several years ago at my son’s private school, the administration had to put out a similar dress code for the moms. Too many sexy, tight, revealing clothes being worn into the school. I have no issue with what this principal did here. I applaud her. It will only benefit the children to enforce standards in the people who are their role models (or who should be)
“We care less about the fact that you are here to register your child for school than we do about how you look while doing so.”
Message clearly sent and recieved.
Most of us are doing the best we can.
There has GOT to be more to this story.
By the way, I personally have had to register my three kids for school, while living in a hotel before closing on the house in the new town. Would not have included “middle class signifiers” as clothing I needed to pack for myself for that cross country trip.
Also, by the way, If I showed up at school dressed inappropriately, it is more likely a signal that there is something mightily awry in my life, and maybe THAT is the important thing someone might want to privately address. My loved one is in the ICU, I’ve been there all night, and I haven’t had time to change. I worked the night shift and can barely see straight. My significant other burned all my other clothes in a rage last night and I am in fear for my child’s life. Just got kicked out of out apartment, and the landlord locked all my clothes in it. I am having a mental health crisis and this is the best I can do…
But, let’s get judgmental about the parent’s clothing.
I don’t think it is a dress. Looks like a sheer t-shirt, since you can pretty easily see through it at the bottom. Yes, I can see why the policy is needed.
No one has ANY idea what the parents are going through that has lead to them dressing that way.
How many of you had to work multiple jobs to stay afloat? Had to routinely pull doubles just to keep food on the table?
Knowing the demographics of CC, the answer is not many of you.
Maybe that mom DID just roll out of bed because she got home from the midnight shift at 7 AM and had to go into her second job at 2 PM. Therefore, every minute of sleep is precious but yet she STILL made time to go in and register her kid.
There are days when it physically hurts me to put on “real” clothes so I stay in pajamas when I go out. Yes, I am in so much pain that denim and other tight clothes physically hurts me. Would you know I was sick just by looking at me? No, because my diseases rarely have physical indicators that the general public would recognize. So yeah, there may be a point in my future with my kids (should they ever end up materializing) where I have to go get my kid from school in my pajamas. Especially if they end up inheriting my autoimmune diseases which forced me to go home sick a lot as a kid.
My point is - you don’t KNOW what these parents are going through and what their lives are like. The resistance here is almost entirely classist, ableist, and often racist and sexist. And since you don’t know what these parents and kids are going through, why not just assume that they’re there, doing the best they can?
There’s a clickable link from the first article linked in the OP with the interview with the mother. The T-shirt dress goes past her finger tips. It meets the length requirement. Her hair wasn’t in a bonnet but covered by what looks to be a cotton headscarf. Hard to tell for sure if there were curlers underneath but if there were, they weren’t visible.
Not liking the particular outfit isn’t adequate reason to say it breaks the dress code. I think capris look ridiculous, that doesn’t mean I should be able to ban them from places (even if I had the power to do so).
All that is somewhat besides the bigger (IMO) points.
This policy wasn’t clearly communicated. Not only was the community not part of determining the policy, it wasn’t even publicly announced until after this mom was barred from the school. It smacks of being formally written after they created a controversy by barring the mom.
This mom was new to this school, there to enroll her daughter who had a bad experience at a previous school. How the heck hard would it have been (had this been a real written policy at the time, which I doubt it was) to bring the mom into the office, after the daughter was all set,and let her know that this particular school places a high value on looking more professional, rather than casual, and they ask parents on the premises to role model that behavior by following a specific dress code?
This Principal created an adversarial, unneeded “us vs them” type of situation. It was poorly thought out. The administration poorly role modeled communication, professionalism and conflict resolution.
It is not elitist to demand people don’t wear pajamas and curlers. Truly, it is not. In this community, at this time, we have standards that people should be dressed when they are in public. Frankly I don’t care if the parents or kids or teachers at your schools show up utterly naked, or wearing swastikas every day. You need to figure out your minimum standards and enforce them. The only bigotry I see here is one of constantly lowering expectations, assuming people in this school community are too dumb or overwhelmed to get dressed.I promise that they can, and most do. The policy is needed due to a few outliers, like this woman
@romanigypsyeyes so agree. There are a lot of rich and upper middle class women on this site who spend gobs of money on clothes. I avoid those threads because I can’t relate at all.
The resistance here is NOT almost entirely classist, ableist, and often racist and sexist. It is none of those things to insist that adults (and frankly mostly women) who are role models for children act accordingly.
It is the revealing nature of clothing that is typically the issue with needing a dress code at schools for parents and almost exclusively for women. Men seem to know enough to show up fully clothed.
The school profile is evident in this article. This principal has done herself no favors, because she has alienated her own community and now has the eyes of the world on her.
@TQfromtheU – funny how we react differently to the same photo. Maybe I live in a particularly casual place, but the way that woman is dressed seems totally fine to me. Half the people I know wear flip flops on hot days. And the scarf… it’s a scarf. People wear scarfs for all kinds of reasons. Hers doesn’t look unkempt. Maybe in other photographs it’s clear that the dress is more revealing. But judging by this picture, I don’t know… it seems someone at the school was in a bad mood and took it out in a fairly controversial way…