Proposed Dress Code On Tap for School Board Tuesday

students and their parents could find out as soon as tonight if a will be in place for the district's first day of school later this fall.

Members of the East Haven Board of Education are scheduled to discuss and possibly approve the proposed policy — which would cover the district's kindergarten through middle school students — at this evening's regularly scheduled meeting, which begins at 7 p.m. at the .

A finance subcommittee meeting will be held at 6 p.m. prior to the start of the regularly meeting. Both agendas are posted in the gallery that accompanies this article.

PTO/PTA Leadership Leads Effort

The dress code policy was spearheaded earlier this school year by the district's PTO/PTA Advisory Subcommittee.

Subcommittee members have said their move to research and then develop the proposed policy was in response to parent feedback requesting the district move toward a new, more strict code of dress for students.

Survey/Forum Results

At earlier this month, some two-thirds of the 50 or so parents and caregivers who attended said they opposed the dress code policy change.

Instead, many asked administrators and school staff members to more fully enforce the dress code already on the district's policy books.

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This was in stark contrast, however, to a district-wide survey sent out to more than 2,000 kindergarten to 8th grade student families earlier this year, in which close to 70 percent of the 978 respondents voted in favor of a more strict code for students.

The survey's broken down results — as well as other dress code related information — is included in the public forum PowerPoint presentation, which is posted in the gallery.

Proposed Dress Code

Details of the proposed dress code policy include:

• Tops: Solid colored navy blue, white or burgundy Polo shirts, T-shirts, crew necks or turtlenecks.
• Bottoms: Khaki or navy blue cargo pants, wind pants, Capris, Bermuda/cargo shorts, as well as skirts/jumpers. Also, the length of shirts/skirts must be no higher than 2 inches above the top of the kneecap.
• Sweatpants: Navy blue or burgundy sweatpants may be worn for physical education and/or medical accommodation.
• Outerwear: Clothing such as sweatshirts and sweaters — including "hoodies" — would not be permitted to be worn in the school building during school day.
• Footwear: Must to be "sneaker-type" or flat shoes, and would have "to be properly fastened at all times." Shoes would be required to be rubber soles only, and no slippers, sandals or flip-flops would be allowed.
• Accessories: Items such as backpacks, purses and handbags would have to be stored during the school day.

East Haven Patch will provide live udpates from tonight's meeting via our Twitter and Facebook page.