In response to community outcry over new rules about leggings, Hillsborough County’s school board on Tuesday reversed its recent dress code amendments, moving back to last year’s student dress code.
District officials said the initial change to the student code of conduct came from a group of students working with district staff who raised concerns over leggings.
But the move drew swift backlash from members of the public when it was announced just weeks before the start of the school year.
Board member Jessica Vaughn said the changed dress code would have made Hillsborough among the most restrictive compared to surrounding districts of its size.
Vaughn said the district had room to emphasize what isn’t allowed by the existing dress code, like bare midriffs and insufficiently covered buttocks, but said the policy as written was unfair to girls, implying they need to cover their bodies with oversized clothing.
“I don’t think that was necessarily the intention,” she said. “What I’m hopeful for is at the next policy workshop cycle, we can fit this in.”
Board member Patti Rendon said she believed the rule should be tweaked. She said it was not about girls, but spandex in general and said she’d seen boys wearing spandex shorts and pants too.
“Leggings and spandex pants are not equitable,” she said. “They are not all full coverage. They all are made with different materials. Some are more cotton. Some are more nylon. Some are more spandex. Some you can see undergarments under, some you cannot. And unfortunately, by going back to absolutely having none, we do require then our staff to policing private areas, and I don’t want to get them into that.”
Board member Henry “Shake” Washington said as a former principal, enforcing dress codes was the biggest pain.
“When I was in high school many, many moons ago, girls only had to wear dresses,” he said. “They couldn’t wear pants. Guys had to have shirts down to their elbows. Times changed, and then when I became a principal, it changed again. When I became a principal, that’s when miniskirts came in.”
School board members said they were surprised by the onslaught of emails they received over leggings. An online petition received nearly 2,000 signatures.
Layla Thomas, a rising eighth grader at Wilson Middle, said she was shocked when she heard about the new rule.
“They should just think about how they can maybe make a different rule that doesn’t target girls specifically in this heat, because I don’t want to wear sweatpants and jeans on the first day of school,” she said. “They should think about how middle school girls can, like, just survive.”
Rising sophomore Jessica Eagle, a student athlete at Wharton High, told board members leggings were practical, especially given bans on shorts that end before mid-thigh — a difficult length to find in athletic apparel for taller female students.
“This is dangerous to student health (with) the extreme temperatures in Florida,” she said. “It can cause issues with exhaustion all the way to heat stroke. Hillsborough County recently became an A-grade district without the new dress code. Why add a new rule that is detrimental to our education as it shifts girls’ focuses from what we’re learning to worrying about what we’re wearing?”
Board members said they would consider refining the rules at an upcoming workshop.
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