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Attending to teacher attire: school leaders wage a tense campaign to maintain a staff's professional look
School Administrator, Feb, 2003 by Ruth E. Sternberg
The policy, approved in 1994 and modified in 1997, mirrors elements of the student dress code, both of which prohibit sheer or tight clothing and the wearing of hats inside buildings. The teacher code recommends several types of professional dress, including dress slacks, shirts with collars and ties, yet it allows staff members to make judgments about whether they need to wear jeans.
In Sayreville, N.J., a school system of about 5,800 students, Superintendent Dennis Fyffe says word choice and flexibility are important, both to satisfy teachers' needs and to prevent the board from having to renegotiate details of the policy every few years. Sayreville's policy, approved in June, focuses on situations when teachers might have to divert from the rules. Inclement weather and special class activities are listed as circumstances when teachers might want to dress down, perhaps even wearing jeans and tennis shoes, both normally banned from the classroom.
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Fyffe put considerable emphasis on the wording of the district's policy on attire. It spells out the categories of dress, banning, for example, "torn or dirty clothing" and "dungarees or jeans made of denim," but it doesn't name brands or styles that are likely to fade from fashion and become obscure quickly. Sayreville's policy indicates some attire is merely recommended by referring to it as "strongly encouraged but not required."
Attorney Elizabeth F. Murphy, who has represented more than a dozen school boards in northern and central New Jersey, says one of the biggest problems with dress codes is clarity. "Dress code problems arise when what is prohibited is not clear," she says. "If you're going to allow your gym teachers to wear sweatpants or workout pants, you need to specifically say 'phys-ed teachers can wear specific types of clothing,' but make it clear that it's not acceptable for others to wear.
If a policy isn't written with clarity, she asks, "What do you do when your teachers start showing up in warm up suits?"
Pressuring Principals
In Santa Ana, Calif., administrators found that listing a sports coat and tie as the "expected" form of male dress created such ambiguity. Harrison, the union president, says he knows of at least one argument that erupted almost as soon as the policy took effect--after a principal told a teacher to put on a tie.
Teachers union representatives subsequently met with administrators to clarify that the language meant such attire wasn't required.
"If it means we would like you to wear this, but we're not going to punish you, that's fine," Harrison says.
Ambiguity puts pressure on principals, says Murphy, who has seen teacher dress issues surface in most of the districts she has represented--and seen it crop up across the state. "It's a very common issue," she says.
Murphy believes being too specific can create hassles by turning principals into fashion police.
"You don't want to be so specific that you get yourself into a situation where administrators are having to assess what the teachers are wearing to the point of ridiculousness."
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