West Deptford Revises Dress Code Proposal, Phone Survey Coming

After more than 400 members of the public weighed in on an original draft of ’ potential new dress code, a somewhat new-look version is out ahead of a phone survey on the subject this week.

The changes, noted in italics in the version available as a PDF here, focus on a few spots—exempting kindergartners and pre-K students, adding black to the list of acceptable shirt colors and expanding the allowed time for shorts into November and as early as April.

Otherwise, the dress code is largely the same as , when the online feedback form launched.

But, as school board President Christopher Strano has said, the proposed code isn’t necessarily the final version, and could continue to evolve through what he’s called an ongoing conversation about finding what the public at large feels is acceptable.

“It’s a conversation worth having,” he said earlier. “This is a community preference.”

But the board has taken flak for bringing up the issue, including during a lengthy public session in March, where .

While Strano has said the move is aimed at improving the learning environment throughout the district, some parents questioned that at the March meeting.

“I can't see my child being a straight-A student by wearing khakis and a polo,” Cheryl Reeve said at that meeting.

But school board members have pointed out the problems with the current dress code, which suffers from a lack of enforceability, have to be addressed in one way or another, and Strano has suggested moving to a standardized dress code would eliminate those problems.

“The whole essence of this is...it starts at home,” Strano said. “It came down to interpretation.”

There has been some vocal support for the idea, especially among comments left on several stories on the issue, both on Patch and elsewhere.

“These children go to school to get an education,” Lynda Lucano wrote. “I think too much emphasis is placed on what people are wearing.”

But voting in a pair of polls was split; in September, , 63 percent of voters on Patch supported the idea. By the time the version that went out with the online feedback form was released, a separate poll showed 54 percent were against the code.

The district will run a more formal survey this week, with all parents getting a call via cell phone Wednesday on the issue. The survey is a single question on opinion about a move to a standard dress code similar to the revised version now posted on the site, and asks parents to rank their support from strongly in favor to strongly opposed.

The school board will have at least a week and a half to weight the results of the phone survey, with the next school board meeting scheduled for May 14.