LEWISTON — After months of consideration, the School Committee voted 6-0 Monday to approve an amended dress code policy to allow students to wear previously banned items, such as hats, hoods, studded collars and crop tops.

Caleb Ishimwe, left, and Emanuel Francisco work on a group project for the book club in June 2021 at Lewiston Middle School. Students were allowed to wear hoods and hats throughout the pandemic. Daryn Slover/Sun Journal

The amended policy emphasizes the personal rights of students and their families to decide what is appropriate to wear to school. “The board will not interfere with this right unless the personal choices of students create a disruptive influence on the school program or affect the health or safety of others,” the policy reads.

Several statements were reworded and three clauses were removed from the previous policy, including ones which address restrictions on head wear, shirt length, as well as exposed underwear and genitalia.

“This is a significant shift,” Superintendent Jake Langlais said. “I think it’s one that’s, according to the survey input, the student input, the family and community input on that survey, that this is the direction that our community would like to head.”

The district distributed a survey regarding the dress code in November that asked respondents to identify clauses which should be revised and provide additional comments. The policy committee used these responses to guide their revisions.

Originally, the School Committee was scheduled to approve the first reading of the policy. However, committee members voted 6-0 to waive the second reading, enacting the new policy immediately.

The School Committee additionally removed language which prohibited students from wearing clothing that could be considered weapons, such as chains and spiked collars.

Langlais explained that the school already has a policy which prohibits weapons in school. Removing the reference to weapons in the dress policy will give more weight to the weapons and violence policy, he said.

Committee Chairwoman Megan Parks added, “I think that the direction in eliminating that language from the dress code policy, but keeping it in the weapons policy, was to really draw the line between what is an actual weapon and what is a 12-year-old girl wearing a studded collar from Claire’s that is clearly not a weapon.”

The new policy also includes a revised statement that allows school administrators and teachers to require special clothing for certain activities or classes such as extracurricular activities, vocational tech programs, and physical education. They cannot, however, require items from a specific brand.

The dress code was last revised in 2015. In June, the School Committee considered amending the policy to allow students to wear hats and hoods, but ultimately tabled the discussion in order to get more input from staff and the community. Since then, several students and parents have spoken during public discussion to encourage the School Committee to revisit the policy, which some said was particularly harmful to girls and enforced unequally by school staff.

District staff will be notified by email of the new policy, Langlais said.