LAKE PLACID — Three students on the Lake Placid Middle-High School student council addressed the district’s board of education on Tuesday to defend proposed changes to the district’s dress code’s policy, which the board voted down earlier this month.

The board unanimously agreed to vote on the recommendations again at its next meeting on April 5.

The board narrowly voted against the dress code amendments at its meeting on March 8. Board members Martha Spear and Daniel Cash voted in favor of the new policy; board members Joan Hallett-Valentine, Colleen Locke and board President Rick Preston voted against it. Board member Brian Liam Kennelly was absent for the vote. The board’s vote followed a months-long analysis of the dress code by the school board, the district’s policy committee and an ad hoc committee created to review the policy.

Four students spoke out against the district’s current policy at a school board meeting last September, specifically raising issues with the district’s no-hat policy and what students believed to be discriminating policies that sexualized young women. That night sparked the formation of the ad hoc dress code committee — made up of students, district staff and other district stakeholders — that came up with the recommendations for changes to the dress code policy, which would have allowed high school students to wear hats in school.

The amended hat policy was the dress code’s point of contention for a few board members. Board members have generally shown support for the rest of the policy changes, which were also thrown out with the vote. The other recommendations asked that the current requirement that shirts be able to be tucked into bottoms be amended to say that the “lower hems of tops should be able to naturally touch the waistband of bottoms.” The committee also recommended that the visibility of bra straps not be counted as a dress code violation and that proper procedures for intervening in dress code violations be established.

Freshman and student council Secretary Abbey Light, who served on the ad hoc dress code committee, was one of the students who spoke at last September’s board meeting. She returned for Tuesday night’s meeting, along with two other members of the student council, to defend the dress code policy recommendations.

–

Students speak

–

Light, student council President Caleb Mihill and student council Vice President Addyson Colby spoke before the board during its “Good of the Cause” portion of the meeting, where members of the public can address the board about school-related matters. Student council Treasurer Melanie Megliore was also present, though she didn’t speak.

Light said students disagreed with the board’s rejection of the policy amendments, especially after the work students put into creating them.

“I speak for other students, not just myself, when I say that students are frustrated,” she told the board. “We took the proper steps we were told to in order to make a change, and after seven months, we feel as if nothing has changed.”

Mihill told the board he didn’t want to disrespect its members or anyone who stood against the new dress code policy, but he said he spoke on behalf of the student body in asking for reconsideration of the changes. It’s not about politics, he said.

“This is about aiding the youth of Lake Placid in feeling more secure, comfortable and strong in themselves,” he said. “A lot of adults in our community say, ‘We support the youth of Lake Placid and their endeavors.’ Now is the time to support us.”

Student council members brought up two main points to the board: support for the hat policy and support for a dress code that doesn’t discriminate against young women’s bodies.

–

Body positivity

–

Colby said someone pointed at her shirt the other day and said her clothing made them uncomfortable. She’s heard a lot of teachers and adults explain how they’re uncomfortable with female students’ bodies and how they dress. People don’t say things like that about male students’ bodies, she said.

“Now this isn’t any disrespect towards them, but kids should be able to wear what they want to … without being sexualized for an inch of their stomach or shoulders showing,” she said.

Colby said telling students their bodies are “distracting” and make people feel “uncomfortable” is a harmful message that makes students feel uncomfortable and unsafe in school.

She added that some body types are “dress coded” over others. She said she feels girls who have the cultural beauty standard of a slim body can get away with showing more skin than those who don’t.

“When two girls wear the same top, but only one of them gets dress coded, is where it starts to feel like you are being picked on and can’t possibly wear anything to school,” she said.

–

Hats or nah

–

Mihill told the board that hats do more things for students than they could imagine. He compared hats to a lucky penny, a knickknack — something you always like to have with you — and he said that’s what hats are to students. He said it gives them confidence to focus and take on the day.

Often quoting past board meetings, Mihill rebutted several points against hat-wearing that he said board members have made in the past. He said some board members have said that allowing students to wear hats wouldn’t properly prepare them for life after high school; that hats could distract students from learning; and that it’s disrespectful to wear hats. Mihill addressed each point individually, saying that people in college, the professional world and beyond regularly wear hats; that the recent Spirit Week at the high school, where students could wear hats, proved that hats, goofy or otherwise, aren’t distracting in class; and that allowing hats would teach students respect since they’d still be required to remove hats during national anthems, the pledge of allegiance and some presentations.

Mihill said he spoke with a man on Main Street who said hats were once allowed at LPMHS, a time board member Colleen Locke has referenced in past meetings. Mihill then referenced a past board meeting where members discussed the norms of dress and decorum as a “pendulum” that swings from more formal dress to more casual dress, where older generations often embrace more formal wear while younger generations tend to dress more casually.

“So that pendulum is actually shifting to a prior era that granted the students with more personal freedom, and isn’t that what we want in a public school?” Mihill asked. “Public school that builds us up as people and makes us stronger, more confident in ourselves and ready to take on the world?”

The student council later said that it wants as many people who can attend the next board of education meeting, when the next vote will take place, to come and show support for the dress code policy.

–

Board discussion

–

The board held a discussion about the dress code policy after the Good of the Cause portion of the meeting.

Board members Daniel Cash and Locke commended students for their work in forming the dress code policy recommendations.

“I think that we should bring it back and vote it through,” Cash said.

Locke stood firm in her opposition to the hat policy, saying that she’d heard too much negative feedback from teachers to justify approving it. She again thanked students for their efforts.

“Throughout your life you’re going to lobby for things, and it’s a lot of hard work, but probably nine times out of 10 you’re not going to have the result that you hoped for,” Locke said. “But that doesn’t mean you can’t keep going forward like you’re doing tonight.”

Kennelly agreed and said that he would have voted the policy down if he were present for the last meeting.

Locke asked the board if there was some way to vote on the dress code policy again, but with the item about hats redacted — or if they could vote on the hat policy and the remaining points of the dress code recommendations separately.

Cash again requested that the board bring back the policy recommendations and vote them through. He said that students, like parents and teachers, are the school’s constituents and should be listened to.

Locke agreed that students and parents are the schools constituents, and she reiterated that the board should listen to the “50 to 60%” of teachers who didn’t want hats in the building.

The issue with hats was also raised by a teacher, board members said at their meeting on Feb. 22. As a result, the board decided to poll teachers about hats over the last couple of weeks, asking them if they wanted to allow or disallow hats in their individual classrooms. Locke said then that the vote was nearly evenly split.

Cash said survey results showed that the majority of high school teachers wanted hats, while the majority of middle school teachers didn’t want hats; the hat policy would only apply to high schoolers. Locke added that four teachers told her they thought the survey questions were skewed, and she said she wanted to stand by them.

“If we do surveys then we just say, ‘Well, we don’t think the surveys were good,’ and we throw them out, then why are we doing them?” Cash asked.

–

Re-vote

–

Lake Placid attorney Ron Briggs told the board that any member could make a motion to bring the policy back for a vote in whichever way they saw fit – with or without the hat policy. Kennelly made a motion to bring the policy back for a vote at the board’s next meeting with the hat policy intact, Cash seconded the motion.

Locke asked if something could be done to change the wording of the motion that would allow the board to vote on the recommendations separate from the recommended hat policy. Preston said Locke could make that recommendation; she didn’t.

The board unanimously voted to bring the original policy recommendations back for a vote at the board’s next meeting.