This district has a little over 81,000 students , of whom 27 percent are white. Its current dress code was challenge in a petition supposedly crafted by a group of parents. It reads in part:

Public school dress codes are degrading. This is no mean feat, given how low the standards already are. As good example of the trend comes from the Austin Independent School District (AISD) in Texas.

The current district dress code does not uphold the AISD values of equity, diversity, and inclusion. It contains vague language, arbitrary restrictions, and emphasizes bans on clothing that are primarily worn by females and minorities. It also allows for individual schools to create additional restrictions, which leads to further inequality across our district.

This petition touched all the hot-button issues and basically claims that the current dress code is racist and sexist and does not uphold "diversity." Faced with such charges, what could a progressive school district do but capitulate? A new dress code was formulated. Here's how one Austin TV station describes what's coming.

Under the new proposed dress code, students would be allowed to wear hats, sweatshirts with hood up, athletic gear and even pajamas. Specifically for girls, spaghetti straps, tank tops, halter top and shorts of any length, as long as their buttocks are covered, would be permitted. The draft says bra straps and underwear waistbands could also show under the new rules.

Needless to say, students would be allowed to dress according to the gender identity of their choice. That is, boys can dress as girls, and girls can dress as boys. Some sanity remains: the dress code would not allow students to wear clothing with profane or violent language or images. One has to wonder, however, if the administration would consider having an American flag image on a sweatshirt profane or violent. And if you think gym shorts for girls are innocuous and conducive to learning, think again.

Austin is not alone. USA Today ran a story entitled "California school's no-shame dress code empowers students to wear what they want" about the dress code at the Alameda Unified School District in the Bay area. As a concession to the handful of conservatives who might reside in the Bay Area, the district's dress code mandates "clothing that covers genitals, buttocks and areolae/nipples with opaque material."

It has been said that civilizations collapse with not a bang, but a whimper. That is, the decay leading to collapse is incremental. It happens step by step over time — much like termites eating away at the structure of a house. This is the path America's K–12 public education system has been on for over a generation. When the public schools across the country aren't indoctrinating their students in multiculturalism and teaching a negative view of America, they are feeding them academic mush. All on the taxpayer's dime.

It is hard to see how the new dress code in Austin will improve the academic performance of the schools. In fact, one of its unintended consequence might be that parents serious about education will seek out private or charter schools for their kids. The schools, after all, supposedly exist to educate and civilize the young. Bringing ghetto dress — which begets behavior — into them under the guise of "inclusion" and "diversity" is not uplifting. It's degrading. And allowing teenage girls to dress as sexy as they want in an environment filled with hormonally charged teenage boys is beyond foolish.

Where are the adults?

Image: daily sunny via Flickr (cropped).