I taught for many years in Public schools, both junior and senior high schools, on both coasts and in the middle, serving on a number of committees and leadership teams, and as the Union building representative in ore than one district , and at one time a town’s teacher union president.
I served on district handbook committees, and helped update student and parent handbooks, as well as policies contained in them, and advocating that they be more inclusive of all students regardless of personal, political, or religious beliefs.
Each revision of the student and parent handbook before being release for the upcoming year usually dealt with the student dress code.
The rationale for prohibitions in the dress code was to ban styles of clothing that might distract student from learning or disrupt the educational environment, and in the more conservatively religious districts maintain a modest atmosphere.
To that end, any fashion that exposed too much flesh or might incite fights was prohibited. But there were a few things that showed the flaw in the reasoning as the influence of political, religious, and personal beliefs often had a strong influence.
A shirt with a Gay Pride flag would have to be turned inside out, while the same did not hold for one with a confederate flag. A shirt with something that might promote atheism was taboo, but those with Christian religious images were perfectly fine. My favorite in that last category was the one I saw often that had a human hand pierced by an exaggeratedly large nail stuck to a piece of wood with just a little too much blood to be tasteful telling any observer that “He died for you.”
It really was a bit much.
Gang related clothing was also prohibited even though no one could actually say what that was. Yes, there were some clothing styles that were universally known to be gang related, but not every piece of hip hop clothing worn by a Black or Hispanic kid was.
And another contradictory approach was when it came to male and female clothing.
While girls were not allowed to wear any tops that showed “too much” skin, like bare shoulders, exposed abs, or too much thigh, except on game days when cheerleaders were allowed to wear their NFL style skimpy outfits to class, no one had any problem with high school males walking through the halls wearing baggy basketball shorts without any underpants so the flopping in the crotch area let you know what they were packing.
Bringing a girl to the office for exposed shoulders was a constant, but bringing a male to the office to address the flopping meant the teacher might have to explain why he or she was looking when there was no way to avoid seeing what was meant to be seen.
School administrators, local religious leaders, and local politicians seemed to always have an opinion on the dress code.
If the same attention given to clothing, with some humorous evidence of old guys really not understanding youthful style, were given to how to keep guns out of school, perhaps things would be different.
Some districts are even allowing kids to come to school with guns as long as they leave them in their cars because, as we all know, kids never leave the school building while classes are in session, and would never use them before or after the school day.
Or, maybe since teachers having guns is supposed to be the best deterrent to guns on campus, Miss Goldfarb should wear a spaghetti strap dress, or, better yet, a top that emphasizes her abdomen as she slings mystery meat stew in the cafeteria.