City schools tighten up dress code

“I was so tired of seeing their underwear,’’ Szachowicz said. “School is the workplace. I would tell them, ‘This is your work. This is your job.’ ’’

Brockton just instituted a districtwide policy that bans low-riding pants and diving necklines. After ratification by the School Committee, the initiative aimed at beefing up appropriateness in the classroom became effective on this semester’s first day, making the school system one of a handful south of Boston to take such a stern stance on schoolwear.

The Randolph school district tightened the reins on student clothing in 2006, issuing a stringent dress code of what is - and is not - allowed. That code stipulates that underwear, for example, cannot be visible.

The Brockton policy took shape last school year when Szachowicz and her staff began to address on a case-by-case basis students who chose to don droopy drawers and visible lingerie.

“I heard several students say, ‘Show me where it says that,’ ’’ Szachowicz said, when she admonished them for inappropriate dress. “I knew you can’t put everything in a handbook, but you can be more specific to clarify. Now, it’s across the board. We can say, look, this is school. It isn’t the beach.’’

“There are degrees of style,’’ said Richard Bath, a Ward 2 Brockton School Committee member and fashion professor at Lasell College in Newton. “But what’s out on the street should stay on the street.’’

So when students returned earlier this month, they found things had changed. Backside-baring trousers must be hiked up to the waist, shirts must be appropriate, and undergarments must remain under cover, or the wearer risks being singled out to change clothes.

There is a time and place for everything and up to now such ultracasual dress has been the “800-pound gorilla in the corner,’’ Bath said. “Dr. Szachowicz got fed up with trousers down around their ankles and tank tops with cleavage everywhere. And I agree. I support her wholeheartedly.’’

Such a schoolwear policy seems to have been mulled by many districts south of Boston, although few have implemented one. For many school districts, said Glenn Koocher, executive director of the Massachusetts Association of School Committees, the dilemma is this: At what point do you see too much and how do you define that?

“Student dress today is significantly different than it was 20 years ago and exponentially different than it was in the 1960s and ’70s,’’ Koocher said. “People who haven’t been in a public school in a while would find themselves shocked today.’’

Teachers are also concerned about their professional well-being, feeling vulnerable to allegations of gawking, he said. “If you have a student in the third row who is pouring out of a garment,’’ said Koocher, “you can’t help but see the inappropriateness of it. Yet you have to pretend you don’t see it.’’

In Randolph, after school officials delivered their edict, work began in earnest to rein in a variety of controversial styles, including the trendy pants with gratuitous glimpses of boxer shorts, briefs, and thongs, as well as a range of skimpy tops, said School Committee chairwoman MaryBeth Nearen.

At the time, officials also banned hooded sweatshirts after some students continually left the campus with the hoods in place so no one could see who they were, she said.

Last winter, though, a group of incoming freshmen petitioned the Randolph School Committee to allow them to prove that wearing “hoodies’’ is not an automatic negative. Open to a trial run, the school panel temporarily rescinded that prohibition. Students may wear the shirts but may not put the hoods on their heads, Nearen said.

Koocher said clothing choices are constitutionally protected. “But there are some lines that should not be crossed,’’ he said.

In Randolph, tank tops, for example, can only be worn under other shirts. If students exhibit too much skin, they are called to the school office by a secretary who will offer them a T-shirt.

In Brockton, students are also offered T-shirts or sweat pants that the school buys in bulk from Ocean State Job Lot, Szachowicz said. But more often than not, they have a change of clothes with them, she said - almost as if they are anticipating the reprimand.

Randolph staff members stand at the doors when students arrive each morning to check for problems. Brockton has hall monitors in place, although Szachowicz said the new dress code does not seem to need much policing.

Brockton schools are known, ironically, as the home of the Boxers. But, Szachowicz stressed, “not showing your underwear is a reasonable standard.’’

Michele Morgan Bolton can be reached at mmbolton1@ verizon.net.