Matt Haney / commentary
May 14, 2014

Matt Haney

Matt Haney

With all the challenges that we face in getting students to experience welcomed, comfortable and safe at school, why nosotros would we gear up upward new barriers that push button some students away, peculiarly students of color? In a city known for our eclectic style and love for our sports teams, where residents struggle to stay here, why are we creating blanket bans and punishing students for clothing that many of us utilize regularly to limited our identity and local pride?

These are some of the questions that the San Francisco Board of Educational activity considered this week when nosotros voted unanimously to update and modernize our student dress code policies by eliminating outdated aspects of our clothes code and lifting a commune-wide prohibition on hats and caput coverings.

With the passage of the district'south new policy, students' rights to vesture a hat outdoors and for religious reasons will be protected, and school communities will have the opportunity to develop their own dress standards by taking into consideration the voices of students, parents and staff.

Teachers will no longer have to hunt students around the hallways enforcing a hat ban simply considering it is district policy, and nosotros will ensure that students aren't suspended or sent habitation for dress code violations.

Creating schools where students experience welcome and continued, where they can safely limited their identity, is non a minor issue, particularly for our most vulnerable students.

Restrictions on hats and head coverings deserve special attention. There is a broad range of reasons that students may want to cover their heads, some religious, some cultural, some economical and some securely personal.

A middle school pupil told me well-nigh how there are some days, such every bit when she had been unable to get her hair cutting, that she would either skip school to avoid embarrassment or cover her head and risk punishment. A high school educatee recounted to me how he often felt that his school just noticed him when he did something wrong, and the first affair he'd hear from schoolhouse staff when he walked in the doors was "Take your lid off."

Despite the hat ban, hats are yet common in many schools, often leading to consequences such as referrals, detentions, suspension, or incidents of "defiance" that take time away from both teachers and students. Nosotros should ask whether it is worth spending the precious time of teachers and school regime on enforcing pocket-size rules that may take no clear relationship to the school'due south educational mission, while often keeping students out of course and pushing them farther away.

Some see chapeau bans as related to teaching students professionalism and respect. Fifty-fifty if information technology is unfair, nosotros live in a world where people who wear hats, particularly baseball hats, may be judged as threatening or unprofessional in some contexts. Others have brought upwardly a perceived relationship between hats and gang action.

These are questions that should exist considered by school communities in deciding what works best for them. In schools with gang problems, administrators might want to continue hats of certain colors out. Teachers might as well want to set specific rules for their classrooms. However, we should reflect on the caste to which schools may be reinforcing societal double standards that treat young people, particularly young people of colour, differently from others.

Lifting a ban on hats is not going to solve the deep challenges facing our public school system. On its ain, this policy change won't close the racial opportunity gap, or bring more funding to the schools. But what information technology tin practice is help teachers and students to focus on what matters virtually: fostering the respect, understanding, support and cocky-expression that all students demand to be successful.

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Matt Haney is a commissioner on the Lath of Education in the San Francisco Unified School District. He is also a fellow and a lecturer at the Stanford Pattern School (d.school) and the onetime executive manager of the UC Educatee Clan.

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