School board will revisit dress code in the new year




The Conejo Valley school board is preparing to receive an update on the district’s dress code policy.

Adopted in spring 2021, the student-authored policy has come under fire from some teachers and parents for being too lenient. It allows previously prohibited clothing, like spaghetti straps and midriff-baring tops, and does away with regulations on the length of skirts and shorts.

At the Oct. 11 school board meeting, board president Karen Sylvester said the policy would be on an agenda as a non-voting item.

“It’s just a periodic check-in,” Sylvester said in an interview.

The policy was written by a seven-student committee made up of members of the Student District Advisory Council. Students said the update was needed because the previous dress code led to shaming, discrimination and exclusion due to vague language, subjective interpretation and uneven enforcement.

The dress code still bans language and images relating to violence, drugs, alcohol, crime, hate speech, profanity, pornography or that create a hostile or intimidating environment. Visible underwear and bathing suits are not allowed.

A 2021 survey showed CVUSD students and teachers were split over the impact of the dress code.

Twenty-five percent of the 390 teachers who responded felt that the new dress code creates a safe and respectful academic environment. Nearly 60% of teachers disagreed with that statement.

Meanwhile, 60% of the 2,572 students in grades six through 12 who responded to the survey said the new dress code creates a safe and respectful environment.

Sylvester said it makes sense to “see if there are any improvements that need to be made,” but added, “We cannot go back to the old dress code.”

The previous policy, adopted in August 2008, was “problematic for many students,” she said.

Courtney Stockton, president of the teachers union, said teachers were left out of the conversation when the policy was formulated.

“I know that I’ve talked to some female teachers who are a little uncomfortable with what some of the girls are wearing on campus nowadays,” he said.

There have also been some issues at the elementary level, such as a student who wanted to wear a princess costume with a cape.

“When she was on the monkey bars and stuff like that, it was kind of a safety hazard,” Stockton said. “It would have just been nice for us to have been able to give our input.”

He said they need to “keep safety in mind when we’re saying you can wear whatever you want.”

If the dress code is brought up on the agenda again, Stockton said, he’d like input from teachers, administrators, district staff, students and parents, and from there, “go through and revamp the policy if they feel that’s appropriate.”

“But I will say that I have not talked to anybody that thinks we should have kept the old dress code policy,” he said. “I think we all recognize that it was inherently sexist.”

Sylvester expects the dress code discussion to take place in the first quarter of 2023, potentially in February, to give the district time to get the feedback in place, she said.

Teachers, staff and school site administrators are the ones “who can say how changing the dress code made a positive or negative impact on our students and our campus climate,” she said.

“We’d love to hear from the students, too. . . . Has it proven to be exactly how they thought it would be? Do they think there needs to be changes? I would love to kind of loop back to the students as well.”