Corduroy banned at NC middle school

Tag : Corduroy Fabric
Students at Newton-Conover Middle School will have to putaway their corduroy pants.

The system’s school board banned the material under theschool’s dress code, which also disallows denim.

“Corduroy has more instances of ripping and tearing andtherefore has more issues with not meeting the standards set by thedress code,” said school Principal Jim Elliott.

Elliott was reporting to the school board during its meetingThursday night. The meeting also served as a time for parents toexpress their feelings about the code. However, only one personspoke to the board.

“My main concern is the type of fabrics allowed,” saidVivian Pike, grandmother of a student at the school. “Mygranddaughter wore twill pants to school and was told they were notallowed. I had to take another pair of pants to school forher.”

Elliott, backed by Superintendent Barry Redmond, said the decisionwas left to the teacher and administration. While twill is anacceptable fabric, a child can be asked to change clothes if itappears to be denim.

“I am all for the dress code. I really like it, but sometimesit can be too picky,” Pike said.

Elliott presented statistics gathered over the past school yearthat strongly support the dress code. The school had set certaingoals at the beginning of the year, mainly concerning studentbehavior, and the numbers show the school surpassed all of them.

Instances of punishment for not adhering to the code were minimal,Elliott said. Records from the 2007-08 school year show threestudents were sent to Behavioral Intervention Plan (in-schoolsuspension), two to Saturday detention and one was put inout-of-school suspension for not conforming to the new code.

Elliott said the comments concerning the code were mixed at first.

“We had comments throughout the year, both positive andnegative, the negative usually concerning the issue ofconsistency,” he said. “And there were issues alongthose lines at first, but it got better through the year.”

Several board members reported hearing mostly positive things aboutthe code.

The code will come before the board on an annual basis.