Go to the Friendly place.

Here we go again with another classic Melrose critic trying to blame the school system and those with differing opinions for all that is wrong in society, and especially, Melrose.

Its the parents responsibility to make sure their children are dressed appropriately, its the parents responsibility to make their kids do their homework, go to school, avoid drugs and alcohol, etc., etc., etc.

You people are like broken records. Enough already. Parent your kids. its what you signed for. Not to be their friends or to relive lost youth.

On the dress code note, I'm personally OK with the stretch and the yoga pants. Its what the kids are wearing. Its what the parents are wearing, even the fat moms wear them...not always well, but they wear them. I say live and let live, and take care of your own.

http://evanston.patch.com/groups/around-town/p/leggings--yoga-pants-banned-at-haven-middle-school

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/oddnews/high-school-outlaws-yoga-pants-and-leggings-173901237.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/09/leggings-ban-kenilworth-junior-high-california_n_3046043.html

http://blogs.citypages.com/blotter/2012/11/minnetonka_high_school_bans_yoga_pants_top_10_tweets.php

http://www.santarosamom.com/forum/topics/should-leggings-sknny-jeans-be-banned-at-school

http://peabody.patch.com/groups/trending-in-america/p/school-bans-leggings-and-yoga-pants--too-distracting-for-boys

Ok, that's enough to prove my point. This is clearly a nationwide issue, not related to just Melrose, involves schools, and many diasagree over what's appropriate.

Let's reverse this issue and say, what would parents of girls think if boys decided to wear tight-fitting yoga pants because "they are comfortable"? Would you parents object to their use by the boys?

Wow! You sure are fixated with the clothing worn by kids, on their way to school. You need to get some help.

Did you bother to read the references cited by Agree above. If you did you would realize what the issues are. Educate yourself instead of demeaning others who are highlighting potential and serious issues. In other words, get your head of of the sand!

Oh, right, OK!

Obviously you have not yet opened your eyes! Do some reading and you will find that schools all over Mass and the nation are outlawing the use of yoga pants and leggings for the reasons I have stated above. Exercise clothing should be used for exercising not for regular school use.

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/opinion-la/la-ol-leggings-ban-school-20140327,0,2085738.story

Girls shouldn't wear leggings to school -- and progressive parents should agree
By Charlotte Allen, guest blogger

March 27, 2014, 1:25 p.m.

A middle school in Evanston, Ill., has issued a new dress code barring girls from wearing shorts, leggings and yoga pants to school, on the grounds that the leg-displaying garments are “distracting” to boys.

Well, yeah. Google “leggings images” or, especially, “yoga pants images,” and you’ll see exactly what I mean. Especially if you have ever been — or been around — a boy between the ages of 11 and 14, the usual age range for middle school.

But judging from the reaction of the feminist media — and here’s what’s really surprising, some parents of the kids in question — you’d think that the school, Haven Middle School, had decided to require head-to-toe burkas.

The idea seems to be that the Haven dress code is sexist because it makes the girls stop wearing skin-clinging, butt-hugging outerwear instead of making the boys stop looking at and thinking about the girls wearing skin-clinging, butt-hugging outwear. Indeed, the very idea of having a school dress code for girls is supposed to promote “rape culture.”

Seriously! That’s what they’re saying! Here’s Tara Culp-Ressler at Think Progress:

“Targeting tight pants rests on the assumption that girls must work to prevent themselves from being ogled, rather than teaching boys they should work to avoid objectifying their female peers. The policy also links girls’ clothing to boys’ inability to control themselves.”

And here’s Eliana Dockterman in a piece for Time bearing the lurid title “When Enforcing Dress Codes Turns into Slut-Shaming”:

“y implying that boys simply can’t control themselves around girls’ bodies, administrators are pandering to a culture that too often transfers blame from men to their female victims. They risk encouraging young, impressionable minds, both male and female, that women are in some way responsible because of their ‘suggestive’ clothing and their behavior for sexual crimes and transgressions, rather than making clear that each individual is responsible for his or her own actions.”

And as I said above, even some of the parents at Haven — supposedly mature people who you’d think ought to be telling their daughters to save the yoga pants for yoga class — have gotten into the outrage act. The Evanston Patch quoted a parents’ email sent to Haven Principal Kathy Roberson (a woman, you’ll note):

“We are frankly shocked at this antiquated and warped message that is being sent to the kids. Under no circumstances should girls be told that their clothing is responsible for boys’ bad behaviors. This kind of message lands itself squarely on a continuum that blames girls and women for assault by men. It also sends the message to boys that their behaviors are excusable, or understandable given what the girls are wearing. And if the sight of a girl’s leg is too much for boys at Haven to handle, then your school has a much bigger problem to deal with.

“We really hope that you will consider the impact of these policies and how they contribute to rape culture. Girls should be able to feel safe and unashamed about what they wear. And boys need to be corrected and taught when they harass girls.”

Time for a reality check.

First of all, the Haven dress code isn’t unlike the dress codes that many public schools have enacted to promote clothing appropriate for a learning environment. Kenilworth Junior High in Petaluma banned leggings last year, to a similar outcry in feminist circles.

Second, the issue isn’t about rape culture or even boys harassing girls. It’s about, as the Haven dress code says, distraction. Adolescent heterosexual boys think about girls a lot. Make that almost all the time. And because human males of any age are visually oriented in their sexual attraction (it’s why the porn industry caters chiefly to men), they have a radar-like capacity for spotting and looking at attractive females. Adolescent heterosexual girls, for their part, are just about as boy crazy as the boys are girl crazy, and they have a complementary desire to show off as much of themselves to the opposite sex as they can get away with. Add to that mix a) a media culture that celebrates baring just about everything in public, and b) the runaway hormones and extreme immaturity of early adolescence, and you have a school scene that’s, uh, rather more exciting than it is conducive to studying the quadratic formula.

Of course schools should insist that boys be polite and should punish harassment of girls severely. But there’s nothing wrong with telling girls to tone it down on their end. For one thing, school is supposed to be a serious environment. Just as we deem shorts and leggings in lieu of pants — perfectly fine in some recreational settings — to be inappropriate wear for most offices, we’re entitled to deem them inappropriate for school, especially middle school.

One thing that beats me about progressive parents is that so many of them want their daughters to become scientists and college presidents, but they don’t want them to dress or act appropriately in the educational settings that will prepare them for those intellectual professions. They don’t want boys treating their daughters like sex objects, but they don’t mind their daughters turning themselves into sex objects.

I can understand why the girls who go to Haven wish the dress code would go away so they can dress whichever way they feel like. What I can’t understand is why their parents are egging them on.

Hey leggings, you really explained the issue so that even those progressive women/men will hopefully better understand the issue. Prohibiting the wearing of leggings and yoga pants has nothing to do will limiting free choice or catering to boys’ inability to control themselves. Hopefully common sense will prevail and those adults who object to prohibiting these types of clothing will re-think their position. But don’t hold your breath; hypocrisy seems to be the theme of today!

Schools like BC High require belted slacks (any kind/color) and collared shirts (not uniforms). This is because they are not about being militaristic, but rather they want their young men to dress in a way that respects what they are supposed to be in school to do, in other words, dressing professionally. When these same students go off to their many sports activities, no one objects to spandex, tee-shirts or unbelted pants. (Attend one of their sports events and you will not hear the F-bomb going off in all directions as you do at any MHS event.) But in school, there will be no displays of batman boxers, with pants sliding down around knees. Nor are there earphones hanging off of students' ears during school or cheating/bullying with smartphones (now routine at MHS) during class. These students eat the same cheerios that Melrose students eat, but somehow they emerge from their schooling at a quite different level, socially and educationally. Do you suppose that just possibly there are cultural reasons for this, that just possibly learning in an atmosphere that does not promote or tolerate bad behavior and instead maintains a baseline standard of reasonable and respectful conduct/demeanor/dress that this lessens the occurrence of problematic conduct (that might otherwise be routine in a school with 1400 adolescent boys--even without the presence of girls)?

Dress codes are just one part of it, of course. Since Dillon, MHS has allowed (and even promoted) use of earphones/electronic devices during the class day, right along with eliminating the ban against wearing hats in school. Girls have been wearing what can only be described as denim underwear (masquerading as shorts) since then, also. Now it's various forms of spandex as well, minus the otherwise accompanying dresses/skirts that would be de rigeur, at least during the school day and not on the sports fields, in schools with higher standards of conduct.

The district has devoted ridiculous amounts of time and energy on various policy-wonk officiousness and presentations. Brigit's "mayor's" blog is filled with examples of the administration's prideful boasts of its standard-setting "initiatives," but anyone can see exactly how paperthin it all is.

None of these issues will ever be solved effectively as long as hypocrites and hypocritical policies continue to rule the day. It all connects, starting with a community that doesn't care about its culture enough to improve it actively, effectively, and continuously. Superficial and officious measures are only that and will never be effective.

No one sensible would suggest burkas, no spandex or smartphones. Uniforms may or may not be the ticket (they help in some places but not when the rest of the culture is inconsistent in its approach to problems). Decent, smart, strong, and ethical administration with fair, sensible and consistent policies that are backed up with meaningful consequences would be a place to start, which is not likely to happen anytime soon, given the current lineup. This is a cultural choice, however, not something that just happened. Choose/require something better. This requires educating yourselves about what is actually possible. Melrose could and should be so much better.

Bingo! The last poster said it all, it's a shame more people and parents are not reading that posting! Perhaps this person can post it in Melrose Patch or our local newspapers. I wouldn't be surprised that it gets much positive feedback.

I agree with the previous poster wholeheartedly. The imposition of a dress code or better yet uniforms is not imposed punitively or from a desire to create a militaristic atmosphere. What it does do is level the academic playing field by taking out the distractions of class, wealth, style and poverty. It also serves to remind students that they are all the same and fosters cooperation, politeness and respect for authority. Hate to break it to you Melrose but those are not all bad things.

My daughter went to the charter school. They not only had uniforms but also had a dress code! No jewelry of any kind except for earing studs (for girls only) and religious medals. No makeup. No hair coloring (including boys). No nail polish whatsoever or sculpted nails (senior prom time excluded). No pins, no friendship bracelets or Live Strong bracelets. No hats except for yarmulkes. And lastly all cell phones and Ipods remained in your locker when classes were in session.

Hard to enforce you say? No. It was each teacher’s responsibility to send a student who was out of compliance to the office. The offending accoutrement was removed, placed in the principal’s office, detention was imposed and parents were called if it happened more than once.

The message was if you want to “express” yourself you do it by excelling in academics, athletics, student government, community outreach or the arts. Each high school student was required to complete 40 hours of community service per year and the options were only limited by what a student could think of.

Unfair? Boo hoo! Senior skip days where parents called their little angels out absent? Never happened. If your child was absent and you didn’t call the absentee hot line to report it you got a phone call by 10:00am that day.

The only fun rite of passage that was the unspoken “senior teacher prank day”. Seniors would collectively think of some harmless prank they could play on the administration and the teachers would have to clean it up (which didn’t include silly string, shaving cream, eggs or destruction of school property). The things these kids thought of were nothing short of hilarious and ingenious! (Although I do have to say that I give a lot of credit to the Melrose High kids that sculpted a giant phallus out of snow a few years back and the DPW had to knock it down….LMAO!)

I think the Melrose Schools could use a healthy dose of all of the above. (Sans anatomically correct ice scultpures). Many public school districts in Mass have done this for all of the above reasons and it works. There is nothing illegal about these restrictions or could rise to the level of a litigated constitutional challenge.

Think about it.

I completely agree. I went to a parochial school, and while at the time there were no official uniforms per se, there was a strictly enforced dress code - collared shirts, ties, no skirts above the knees, etc. At MHS at the time boys had to wear ties in the second and third quarters. What it did was remove all the socioeconomic issues and subsequent distractions. Sure, there were cliques, but they were much less malevolent than today. If you said hello to someone, no matter what their circle of friends was, they said hello to you. They might not hang out with you, or you with them, but there was a basic civility and decency that's absent today. I'm a big fan of uniforms, especially in grade school and junior high. School is for learning, not for making some kind of stupid fashion statement. The more distractions you can remove, the better the results.

It's also about discipline - this is what you can wear, this is what you can't wear. Get over it.

Hi, while all of you adults are going on arguing about the fashion choices of girls that don't affect you in any way whatsoever, I figured it might be a breath of fresh air to have a response from an actual student at MHS who is actually affected by the dress code.

At school, what a girl is wearing does not affect actual learning in any way. I haven't seen it in guys, and as a bisexual, I have never been distracted from my schoolwork because I was too busy looking at some girl's bum. During class, everyone is seated anyways, so I don't see how it can really make a difference.

And, moreover, EVERYONE wears leggings and yoga pants. EVERYONE. It's in our culture. That includes honors and AP students, druggies, athletes, even teachers; EVERYONE. In athletics, all of the female uniforms include very short shorts or skirts and tank tops. I personally love wearing leggings because they're comfortable, stretchy, and compared to sweatpants, don't give me weird chafing between my thighs. (I take 3 AP courses) Because so many people wear them, guys of this generation aren't as titillated by the idea of seeing legs and the outlines of adults as more traditional adults are.

And what counts as "leggings"? Are they still inappropriate when you're wearing a long shirt over it? How about a dress? Are jeggings ok? They're really just leggings with pockets. If they aren't, how about skinny jeans? What happens when you add leather details or patterns?

In terms of shorts, it's really difficult to find shorts that aren't really short at stores. The only ones that are really available are really ugly or capris, which are almost as hot and stuffy as real pants.

If the goal is to make the school environment more "professional", you've got to start looking at the boys, too. Are you really telling me that basketball shorts with the underwear showing and a T-shirt (which is what, to my great annoyance, is what the majority of guys wear every day) is more professional than a collared shirt with a cardigan, flats, and leggings? Girls spend so much time picking out their clothes every day, and guys don't really seem to give a ****.
If there was to be a stricter dress code, it should be focused on making the school environment more professional, as opposed to just less distracting to boys. (Or, perhaps, we can just leave it as it is)

Thanks for reading.
[:)s]

Thank you Kardashian girl for that fashion update.

Uniforms. Problem solved. No socio-economic or lifestyle influence or distinction whatever.

Well said, student. As it is, you can only buy what is available, and affordable, to you at the local stores..which is largely yoga pants and leggings. There is a group of adults on this message board that love to attack and harass teenagers, just ignore them.

Yes, this: "This may be the most entertaining post ever. Juxtaposing "chafing between my thighs" with "I take 3 AP courses"......Priceless."

Perhaps this post belongs on the strings dealing with AP courses, since it proves that the AP program at MHS seriously needs revision! LOL! Who are these people????

When there's serious discussion of academic attire including shorts and sweat pants vs. yoga pants, I need no further proof that the country is off the rails.

Watched the senior awards ceremony and graduation on mmtv. Less than 20% of the males wore ties. Most dressed like slobs. Well done MHS. You make our decision even easier!

VOTE NO ON THE OVERRIDE !

The lack of tie....That's on the parents, not the school.

Kudos post is indicative of this board. Clearly they chose an option other than MHS and want to use ties as an example. Meanwhile, they are going to spend thousands of dollars on some crapply local private school that doesn't have the b*lls to submit to the MCAS as they know they will be exposed for a miserable failure. Good luck to your snot-nosed little brat and remember your decision when your kid wants nothing to do with you in a few years.

MCAS is being dumped for another test....look at all the taxpayer money used and wasted on the testing.
I'd rather pay $ for a private school than increase RE. Taxes (since there is no accountability of what is being spent or where).
Voting No on any Override attempt by Mr. 26% or the aldermen who abuse "the city they love" by ripping off their neighbors.

If it comes up, I am voting yes.

Why?

I'm going to vote Yes, just to be spiteful and to wash out "Dear Voting Yes's" vote.

Ouch,I think Richy Rich,just got the"Richard H.Head"award for spouting off.I will be voting NO.also

Am I the only poster that things the Roosevelt parents have way too high of an opinion of themselves? Back off people. As yourself if your own parents tried to meddle in school affairs the way that you do.

Hey Yug (aka Old Guy),

While a reasonable person could easily agree that the current batch of Melrose parents tends towards the entitled and micromanaging where it's none of their business, it's also true that the administration is secretive, considerably less than competent, and quite willing to abuse its power and cause grievous harm to students and staff that will take years to undo. You're right, though, in general!