One Writer's Opinion: I Hate the New Troy Dress Code. HATE IT.

Last year, the Troy Consolidated Community District 30C school board passed a dress code in what many parents considered to be a secret meeting designed to get what they wanted without objection.

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So when students at William B. Orenic or Troy Middle School head back to school this fall, they will be wearing khaki or dark blue pants (shorts, skirts or capris) and a solid-colored polo shirt.

I am a parent in this district. I have one son in fourth grade and a second in sixth. So when you read this, know I am speaking as a parent.

I hate the school dress code.

There, I said it.

I hate the way that it passed. I hate that as a parent, I felt like the school board snuck something past parents, a vast majority of whom spoke out against the code the year before.

And I hate the seemingly arbitrary decision of what colors or patterns kids can and cannot wear.

This is not so much a problem for my fourth grader, and at least the school board members had the wherewithal to realize that the khaki-polo code was overkill for a kindergarten through fourth grader.

My sixth grader, though, big problem. First, my 11-year-old boy is tall. Very tall. Ninetieth percentile tall. So that means we stopped shopping for him in the kids’ section a long time ago. Men’s pants, men’s shirts, men’s shoes. This is NOT the problem of the school board. However, when they maintain that there should not be an economic impact to have to buy khakis and polos any more than would have been experienced had families just had to buy back-to-school clothes, I have to cry foul.

Khaki pants fit a certain way. They do not have flexibility to their sizes. They don’t, for example, have drawstrings. And while some brilliant person invented kids’ pants with an adjustable waistband, I haven’t encountered that in men’s pants. That does not mean they don’t make them. But I haven’t seen them. So while a pair of pants will cost between $10 and $20 no matter if they are khaki or drawstring, my kid can wear the drawstring a lot longer as he grows.

The school board members have also insisted that kids will wear these clothes outside of school hours. Really? How many kids do you know wearing khakis and polos to play outside?

As if that were not enough, there are specifics as to what color the pants must be and that the polos must be a solid color and specifications about the logo size.

Hey, school board members, what is wrong with Plain. Black. Pants?

If I understood the impetus behind the new dress code, it was because the old dress code was not being followed. Boys came to school with droopy pants, girls wore inappropriately revealing outfits. So, in their infinite wisdom, school board members decided to enact a must more strict code. So how is it that black pants would not fit that bill? Do black pants tend to be saggier than khaki or blue? Do they somehow look less presentable?

I polled other parents who shrugged their shoulders and said one consistent thing: Gang colors? So maybe that's it.

If this is that big of a problem at Troy, perhaps we should be talking about it instead of pretending that it's just an afterthought in the dress code. Because when it was first presented, school board members insisted this was not an issue at the district, but that they were trying to prevent future problems. Restricting patterns on shirts and saying no to black pants seems a little stronger than just a preventative measure.

I have the same problem with the insistence that polo shirts be solid colored. What is wrong with stripes or checks or patterns? Is it a gang color issue again?

I think what will happen is that when school lets out in the afternoon, you won’t know whether you are looking at kids getting on a bus or kids in training to work at Walmart or Target. Because can we just be honest here – what Troy enacted was a UNIFORM. Call it what it is Troy. It is not a dress code. What you had before was a dress code. What the elementary school has is a dress code. What the upper grades have are uniforms.

I went to Catholic School. If my son wore dark blue pants and a white or light blue or yellow polo to school, he would look exactly the same as the kids I went to school with decades ago. IN UNIFORM.

I can’t buy into the argument that this is better because a dress code like this will eliminate some of the socio-economic differences between students. It won’t be any different. The kids who are well-off will have brand-name polos and pants and the socio-economically challenged kids will have the ones from the big box store. Limiting it to khakis and polos changes nothing. In fact, even if the code were more stringent, it would change nothing. Kids know. This eliminates nothing.

As if that were not enough, the school board members decided these limited options must be worn in a specific way – shirts tucked in, belt on pants. Khaki pants with a belt and a tucked-in polo might be one of the most unforgiving outfits you can force a kid to wear.

We are trying to eliminate bullying. I am telling you, mark my words as the former fat kid, this is going to be a problem. I bet the Troy school board members never even considered this. I bet they just saw the raw numbers of how many kids were sent to the office for breaking the dress code and decided the fewer the options, the fewer the opportunities for kids have to come to school out of “dress code.” Wearing a belt and tucking in the shirt eliminated baggy pants and exposed midriffs. What could go wrong?

You see, school board members, this is why you should go to the parents. I don’t think there is one issue I brought up in this post that was not brought up when you hosted open meetings that led you to postpone a vote on the new code. But you ignored all that. And you voted in what you wanted when you wanted. When the parents were not around.

There is a plus in all this, though. Our locally-owned thrift stores are going to have a lot more customers – buying blue and khaki pants and solid-colored polos.