Scantily-clad teachers compel schools to consider dress codes
By Olivia Barker
USA Today
As a student at the University of Hawai'i, Katie Conger was strictly a jeans-and-T-shirt kind of gal.
Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser
But the Kailua resident, 23, traded in her comfy college threads for a more professional profile when she went from being a student to a teacher this year.
Katie Conger exchanged her T-shirts for more conservative wear after becoming a Kapolei Elementary School teacher.
"We're role models, definitely," said Conger, a third-grade teacher at Kapolei Elementary School.
But in some schools, the issue of getting first-time teachers to dress up isn't as much of a problem as getting some of them to cover up.
"I was shocked," said Gif Lockley, principal of Eastover Elementary in Charlotte, N.C. "Ooh, it was scary." Lockley was referring to the faculty fashions parading through his hallways of late: slippers, tattoos, low-rise jeans and bellybutton rings.
When it comes to school clothes, many fresh-out-of-college teachers are having a hard time transitioning from the back of classroom to the front, shedding the sloppy or skimpy duds of their dorm days and adopting a more modest, appropriate appearance. The paradox is especially apparent in elementary schools, traditional training grounds for young, inexperienced and overwhelmingly female educators.
In response, administrators are drafting dress codes, written and oral, as policy or agreed-upon expectations, usually on a school-by-school basis. District and county codes are often unspecific: Los Angeles Unified's tells staff to come "neat and clean," while the rules at Alleghany Highlands Public Schools in Virginia simply state, "Dress should reflect the professional position of the employee."
In Hawai'i, the state Department of Education doesn't have an official dress code for teachers, said Greg Knudsen, spokesman for the department.
"We do have general guidelines and expectations for professionalism within the teaching force, and in some cases that has been cited as kind of a way to encourage all of our teachers to look and act the role as a professional teacher," Knudsen said.
Knudsen said the department hasn't received any complaints against teachers who dress provocatively or inappropriately. Still, officials are working on clearer rules, Knudsen said.
"There is some groundwork being laid right now for something maybe a little more specific, but it most likely will still result in just having the principals and the schools themselves set their own expectations based on professional values," he said.
Such is the case at Kapolei Elementary School, where there isn't a formal dress code for teachers, but there are guidelines, said principal Michael Miyamura.
"We ask them to dress professionally," Miyamura said.
"It's important to be comfortable enough to sit down on the floor with the kids and work with the kids on the floor or be able to take them out to P.E. (physical education), but at the same time, I think it's also important that you set an example," Conger said.
While inappropriate attire among teachers isn't a problem at Kapolei, administrators have raised their eyebrows on occasion, Miyamura said.
"Young ones sometimes wear (physical education) shorts that are too short, and we hear complaints from parents," Miyamura said.
Guilty parties are reminded of a simple test: the length of their shorts should not be shorter than where their finger tips are when their arms are extended down against their bodies, Miyamura said.
Meanwhile, on the Mainland, the dress code problem is much thornier in districts where teachers' unions are strong. When administrators like Rod Federwisch try to institute basic dress codes, teachers bat them down. "They say it's part of their academic freedom," says Federwisch, the principal of Lyle S. Briggs Fundamental, a K-8 magnet school in Chino, Calif., which mandates strict dress codes for students.
"Our expectations for students are so high, we can't be hypocritical and expect less of teachers," says Federwisch, who hears complaints from parents about the double standard. "Kids are looking to teachers for direction and guidance, not to be their buddies."
Last November, Juli Kwikkel had "the privilege" of interviewing a teaching-assistant candidate who had her tongue pierced. "I noticed it right away when she was talking," says Kwikkel, the principal of East and West Elementary schools in rural Storm Lake, Iowa. It proved a watershed moment. "I thought, 'Oh, my Lord, we're at a whole new plateau here.' "
Kwikkel offered the woman the position on the condition that she leave her tongue ring at home. She took the job, and Kwikkel hasn't seen her bit of oral hardware since. "You don't want to have to guess who's the teacher and who's the kid," Kwikkel says.
Lockley tried to underscore those distinctions last week when he handed out a sheet of "expectations" as he's done every back-to-school season since 2001, the year he came to Charlotte and first witnessed the bevy of bare bellies. The rules, including no jeans and navel rings, are working, he says. His basic guideline? "No garden clothes," meaning "don't come dressed like you're ready to garden" — or party.
"Some have tried to sneak it in, wearing their little low-rise pants," admits Lockley, who calls appropriate teacher dress a "critical" issue. "But when they raise their hands, out comes that little bellybutton ring, which is the cutest thing, it really is" — just not in an elementary-school context.
The question, says Lockley, is, "Are you willing to compromise community values to stay in the fad?"
Advertiser staff writer Zenaida Serrano Espanol contributed Hawai'i information to this report.
