Before Portland Public Schools relaxed its dress code, this Franklin High student pushed boundaries by showing a bit of his underwear and midriff on the first day of school in August 2014. The new dress code is radically simpler and free of judgment calls. Showing underwear waist bands, midriffs and bra straps is A-OK. It's basically: Wear a top, a bottom, cover your genitals, buttocks and breasts and put on shoes. (Beth Nakamura / The Oregonian )LC- The Oregonian

(This story was published on June 24, 2016)

A year after students and parents complained, Portland Public Schools is prepared to adopt a radically new dress policy that is simple, involves no judgment calls and ends the obsession with shoulder strap widths and shorts lengths.

Should the school board agree, all students would have to wear is this: A top with fabric on the front and sides, including opaque fabric over breasts; a bottom such as shorts, jeans or pajama pants that covers genitals, buttocks and all portions of underwear except the waist band; and shoes.

Gone would be all prohibitions on wearing "gang colors," anything "sexually suggestive," "disruptive" or "plainly offensive," clothing that lets bra straps or midriffs show, and shorts or skirts that are shorter than the reach of a person's fingertips.

Students still would be barred from wearing clothing showing drugs, alcohol, tobacco or other controlled substances; expressing hate speech; depicting or encouraging violence; or displaying pornography. Nor could they wear hats or hoods that block school staffers from seeing their faces.

In general, proponents of the new policy say, the idea is to let students be comfortable and express themselves, putting the focus on keeping them in class, not shaming them, treating them differently based on gender or body type, or making them lose class time based on what they wear.

A panel of Portland teachers, students, parents and school administrators did months of research, including holding focus groups, conducting surveys and researching model policies from other districts, before recommending a wholesale rewrite of Portland's rules. The school board will weigh their proposal Tuesday evening.

The old dress policy required too many judgment calls, mostly by teachers, and led to girls being shamed and disproportionately pulled from class for showing bra straps, midriffs or too much cleavage, that panel's report says.

"If a girl's shirt shows an inch or two of her belly, especially when she reaches her hands up, who cares?" it quotes a teacher as saying.

Parents and students both reported they were unclear on what clothing would and would not pass muster, and it made shopping and dressing stressful, especially during hot weather, the report says. Teachers also reported misery over the code.

"Overall, teachers expressed that they would rather not have to enforce dress code as often as they do, indicating that it is a poor use of time, feels uncomfortable, and is difficult to enforce as it is enforced inconsistently among staff," the report says.

Under the proposed rule, students can wear whatever they need to express sincerely held religious beliefs or to accommodate a medical need or disability.

Portland Public School's current policy currently bans "clothing or displays which are sexually suggestive, drug-related, vulgar or insulting, demeaning to a particular person or group or indicative of gang membership." It says, "Clothing may not be sexually suggestive (examples include bare midriffs, visible undergarments, plunging necklines, see-through materials and sagging pants)." And it says, "Clothing may not substantially interfere with the learning process or school climate."

All that language will disappear if the board adopts the proposed new rule.

-- Betsy Hammond; betsyhammond@oregonian.com; @chalkup

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