Do You Think The TPS Dress Code Is A Good Thing?

...with many TPS policies is that the 'zero tolerance' interpretation leaves no room for common sense.

Telling cheerleaders they need to wear their uniforms on game days but then telling them their uniforms violate the dress codes - seems to exhibit a lack of common sense...but what do I know????

I know my brother has had more than one occasion where he scrambled to make sure his three sons (ages 6, 8, and 11) had their "uniforms" before turning them over to his ex-wife. It would have more "convenient" if he'd been able to dress them with what he had. There are always the arguments (and disciplining) because a kid didn't take off his "uniform" before heading out to play, and got it dirty.

I was at the forum at the Board of Education when they decided to have the dress code, at the time it was called the uniform policy. Parents were very adamant that they wanted their children to be individuals. There were other reason why some of the parents did not want a uniform policy. But there were hand picked parents from the Parent Partners or whatever they are called and the Parent Congress who overruled the other parents because Dr. Eugene Sanders had it stuck in his mind that all students should wear a uniform because it would improve test scores. Well we know how that theory played out.

The first year the elementary schools complied more or less. When the junior highs went to uniform the students found a way to make their "uniform" unique. When it went to high schools, there was a complete rebellion, although the administration was saying what a big success it was.

The Early College parents sent an e-mail to the superintendent and policy committee and said that they did not want their students to have a uniform policy because that would make the students stand out on UT's campus. So the administration complied and relaxed their dress code, while holding other schools and students to a strict standard and even started suspending students for dress code violations.

Scott high school with the four small schools was another situation that was a disaster. For instance after Easter break in April 2007 three of the schools had to be in dress code and the fourth did not, for an entire week. This caused all kinds of chaos because even in the same family you had siblings who had to be in dress code and another sibling who did not.

We represented a few students who were suspended for a dress code violation, such as one student had on a pair of pants that had a pocket which was not allowed. At Bowsher a student was pictured in the Blade in a plaid shirt which was a violation but he got no penalty.

I think a dress code would have been better accepted by the students, pants at waist, shirt tucked in and belt. But only allowing one type of shoe, pants and shirt sometimes caused a problem such as the bigger student could not find the pants or shirt with collar that was required.

As far as the classes and teachers, some enforced the code/policy and some did not. So there was no conformity across the board from school to school.

There was also a theory that uniforms would eliminate the gang problem (that we don't have) but last week I saw about ten boys walking to Scott and all had on nice red shirts with a collar!