Liberty High’s T-shirt furor rankles School Board members

By Emily Richmond

Wednesday, Sept. 15, 2004 | 9:12 a.m.

When told a Liberty High School honors student had again been kept from class Tuesday for failing to comply with the campus dress code policy, Clark County School Board member Denise Brodsky struggled to contain herself.

"There are bigger issues our schools need to be dealing with, like our dropout rate," Brodsky said. "It's a challenge to understand how pulling kids out of class for not wearing the right color T-shirt is helping student achievement."

Kim Jacobs, a junior at Liberty, was sent to the dean's office twice last week for wearing T-shirts with quotations from the Book of Mormon written on them. Liberty follows a "standard school attire" policy, with students required to wear khaki bottoms and solid-colored red, white or blue T-shirts.

Kim did not wear school-approved attire Monday but was allowed to attend classes, her father, Donald Jacobs, said.

Whether or not his daughter is singled out seems to depend on the mood of the school staff, Jacobs said.

"There's no consistency to the message we're getting," Jacobs said.

Liberty Principal Emilio Fernandez has defended his dress code policy, saying it has helped him to create a sense of family at the Bermuda Road campus. Student participation hovers around 100 percent, Fernandez said.

At Thursday's School Board meeting Brodsky, along with President Susan Brager-Wellman, expressed concern that students were being pulled from class solely because they had violated the campus dress code policies. Board members agreed there was confusion over the so-called "standard school attire" and "Dress for Success" policies and called for a work session, which has not been scheduled.

"This is going way beyond reasonableness," Brodsky said Tuesday. "I believe any disciplinary procedures should be held in abeyance until we (the School Board) have an opportunity to get to the bottom of this."

Agustin Orci, deputy superintendent of curriculum for the district, said administrators at schools following "Dress for Success" or "standard school attire" have been told that the policies are under review.

"They've (the principals) have been cautioned not to be unreasonable," Orci said. "We're having internal discussions but no decisions have been made."

Allen Lichtenstein, attorney for the Nevada ACLU, has also urged the district not to punish students while the fine print of the dress code policies are hammered out.

"There is clear-cut case law that says clothing cannot be banned unless it is distracting or disruptive," Lichtenstein said. "If the district takes punitive action, it does so at its own risk."

The district's regular dress code bans items such as spaghetti-strapped shirts and navel-baring pants. It also gives principals the authority to set additional limits on attire.

Twenty-seven Clark County campuses currently impose stricter dress code policies than the one set down in the district's regulations. Nine elementary schools in the district's southeast region are participating in a pilot study of mandatory uniforms. To sign on to the study, schools had to survey parents, with at least a 70 percent response rate and 70 percent showing support for the policy.

No parent surveys were required to implement "standard school attire" or "Dress for Success," a fact that has become a sticking point for opponents of the policy.

"Parents weren't asked. We had no input and that has to change," said Susan Jackson, whose daughter is an eighth grader at Sedway Middle School, one of the campuses following a stricter dress code. "This is a democracy, not a hierarchy."

Beverly Jacobs, who lives with her son and granddaughter, said Fernandez's argument for the standard attire at Liberty doesn't sway her.

"My family resides in my home -- I pay the bills, not the school," Beverly Jacobs said. "I do agree modesty is important, but that's a lesson for the parents to teach. I have no problem with the district's (standard) dress code. Why not get busy enforcing that and see how the kids look then?"

Gary Peck, executive director of the Nevada ACLU, said his organization is eager to work with the district to come up with a dress code policy that is "fair, accommodating and constitutional." But the decision to continue penalizing students such as Kim Jacobs puts that working relationship at risk, Peck said.

"We are hurtling reluctantly, yet inevitably, toward a costly and lengthy lawsuit," Peck said.

When asked whether such as lawsuit was in the works, Peck and Lichtenstein said they would take their cue from the public.

"If there are parents who object to these dress code demands on a religious, philosophical or financial basis and wish to challenge these policies, then clearly we are ready, willing and quite able to file a lawsuit on their behalf," Lichtenstein said.