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The Edcouch-Elsa school district is considering tightening its dress code standards and may implement some kind of standardized dress code — not exactly a uniform, but not dissimilar to one in effect.
Interim Superintendent Alda Benavides told her board Tuesday that principals in the district were vocally calling for more conservative dress code changes.
“We have had a lot of discipline issues and a lot of different things, that we think that if we go back to a standard dress code we will increase safety, we will help our kids be focused on education,” she said. “It will help us enhance school pride, spirit, unity — and then of course it eliminates the competition-dressing, some kids dressing better than others, and then there’s fairness across the board for our dress code.”
Benavides told The Monitor that the standardized dress code the district is looking at would probably be something along the lines of jeans and a single color for shirts.
The district had something similar in place before the pandemic, she said, but dropped it once COVID-19 became the priority.
The pandemic caused other Rio Grande Valley districts to loosen dress codes as well, some describing it as an effort to boost enrollment.
“Things got really lax,” Benavides said.
Benavides described that laxity as leading to small-scale time-wasting across the board rather than any specific dress code incident.
“They’re spending time on it when they could be spending it with instruction. And they’re (principals) saying that this may help,” she said.
We have had a lot of discipline issues and a lot of different things, that we think that if we go back to a standard dress code we will increase safety, we will help our kids be focused on education. It will help us enhance school pride, spirit, unity — and then of course it eliminates the competition-dressing, some kids dressing better than others, and then there’s fairness across the board for our dress code.
Trustees were receptive to the idea.
They asked Benavides to consider firmer guidelines for staff as well, and to look at implementing a standardized dress code for high schoolers in addition to younger students.
“I see a lot of kids at the high school with pants that are not just torn but they’re like — there’s not a pant there anymore,” Board President Rolando Lozano said. “So let’s just get on it and survey them and let’s get the word out.”
The district plans to get the word out through some sort of parent survey later this month.
Benavides said if changes are ultimately made, they would go into effect for the 2023-2024 school year.
