Dunedin High Students May Still Wear Shorts

Dunedin High parents can now add shorts back to their shopping lists. 

In a , Principal Reuben Hepburn proposed a new dress code policy that would have banned students from wearing shorts during school hours.

The proposal mimicked policies in fundamental elementary and middle schools. Dunedin High is about to . However, Hepburn said, the motivation to change policy had nothing to do with adding a fundamental “school within a school” program. 

On July 14, he showed slides of female clothing of inappropriate length to parents. Each slide read, “This is what they’re wearing.” Hepburn made no attempt to hide his distaste for the fashion choices. 

Parents firmly objected. Students firmly objected. One student from another state firmly objected.

They won.

“As I said at the meeting, I am a public servant,” Hepburn said after making a final decision. “I put the issue up for vote, and with the vote, they came back and said they wanted to keep the county dress code.”

Hepburn said the new dress code will still be slightly more stringent than Pinellas County's. Shorts, skirts, culottes and skorts are required to be no more than 3 inches above the knee. The county dress code calls for “mid-thigh.”

Hepburn also said he plans to address concerns that the dress code has not been adequately enforced with a faculty meeting Aug. 16, the day after faculty members return from summer break. He said the faculty will be made thoroughly familiar with his dress code expectations for students and faculty members. He says enforcing dress code among faculty members is more difficult.

“We will continue to utilize the [intervention center] for dress code violations among our students because I think that is appropriate,” Hepburn said. “Inappropriately dressed faculty members will be subject to counseling.”

A county-mandated code was also tweaked over the summer. Ward Kennedy, Region 3 assistant superintendent, explained changes to the county dress code in the Student Code of Conduct Handbook (section 5500.04) at the July 26 school board meeting. 

The changes address disciplinary actions for students found wearing clothing depicting vulgar language or exposing any body parts, which has been prohibited. New language written into the code will now give clearer guidance to faculty members when they take disciplinary action on an infraction.

“Now we have specific disciplinary measures that we had to add to the code for that, and we put some verbiage in for that to clarify for our schools so that they’ll be able to handle it as administrators and also get the point across to our parents,” Kennedy said. 

Students violating the dress code are now subject to a phone call to their home, in-school suspension and even suspension from extracurricular activities for up to 30 days. Kennedy said the reprimand depends on how many violations the student has incurred.