No more skin at Hall
SPRING VALLEY — Hall High School administrators have proposed a few changes that would cut back on the amount of skin students can show.
At last week’s school board meeting, Hall Assistant Principal Gary Barrera said it’s really getting to be a problem.
“It’s probably been the worst this year,” he said. “The shorts are getting outrageous.”
To eliminate bare skin on top, Barrera wants to eliminate the current policy of allowing girls to wear straps if they’re at least two inches wide, to requiring all shirts to have a sleeve.
Barrera said the suggestion wasn’t very popular with a group of seniors.
“I said, ‘If you can show anything that says that much more on a sleeve will dehydrate you with the heat, then maybe I’ll think about it,’” he said.
On the other hand are problems with skirts and shorts.
“They’re very tight, so when they’ve walking, they ride up,” Barrera said.
Next year he would like the policy to require shorts and skirts to be mid-thigh, or fingertip length.
Besides the dress code changes, other changes were recommended for the handbook for the 2012-13 school year.
Barrera said there is still a problem with absences. In the first semester, 36 students missed 10 days or more, and that figure has already reached 29 in the second semester.
“We still have an abundance of students who are missing school,” he said. “We still have a lot of people calling in excused absences for their kids, and that’s a concern.”
Proposed changes include contacting parents after fewer absences and requiring a medical excuse for students who miss three days.
Assistant Principal Eric Bryant talked about a proposed change to the extracurricular eligibility policy making students who are academically ineligible for more than three weeks ineligible for the rest of the season.
“If anybody spends more than three weeks on the ineligible list in the same season, there’s something wrong,” Bryant said. “They don’t need to be out for an extracurricular.”
Superintendent Mike Struna agreed.
“They need to get their grades up and get ready for the next season,” Struna said.
Bryant asked if the school wanted poor students representing the district through extracurricular activities.
“We want these kids representing our school the right way, and that’s that academics is priority No. 1,” Bryant said.
Other proposed changes would require students to purchase the $1 parking permit to bring a vehicle onto the school grounds, raise the age limit for guests to high school dances from 19 to 20, ask that family vacations do not exceed three days per year and not be taken during exam times, and bring students to the board for possible loss of privileges, alternative program or expulsion after exceeding four suspensions.
The board will vote on the proposed changes at May’s meeting.
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