NYC Council votes to push public schools to create systemwide dress code

The New York City Council voted Thursday to push local public schools to create a systemwide dress code.

For now, principals can adopt their own policies, leading to variation between schools. While the Education Department offers guidance about dress codes, councilmembers said individual school rules can unfairly target LGBTQ+ students and students of color.

“There have been many incidents where students have been targeted because of the way that they wear their hair, if they identify as a different sex,” Deputy Speaker Diana Ayala, the Democratic councilwoman for East Harlem and the South Bronx and one of the sponsors, told reporters. “And so, we want to make sure that these things are not happening in our public school buildings.”

The legislative package is two-part: First, the Education Department must post dress codes on its website, and disclose the number of schools with a policy, and violations and penalties broken down by race and gender. The city does not currently track how many schools have a dress code.

“Every school has the discretion to kind of make up their own rules as they go along,” Ayala said.

Second is a resolution, sponsored by Councilwoman Althea Stevens, calling on the public schools to create a systemwide dress code that “accounts for diverse cultures, gender expressions, and body diversity,” it read. A similar resolution was introduced in 2020 by current Comptroller Brad Lander when he was a Brooklyn councilman, with Ayala and Speaker Adrienne Adams as co-sponsors.

At a Council hearing last month on the measures, local education officials testified that students cannot be suspended for not adhering to dress codes, but they may have to report for counseling or meet with their parents and principal. Students who violate the policy multiple times may be removed from the classroom.

Those violations appear to be on the rise. Last school year, the city recorded 155 disciplinary actions related to dress codes — a figure that jumped nearly 12% since the previous term, according to education data.

The Education Department defended its policies and said that while they support the goal of the legislation, the agency has reservations about record-keeping. In 2021, the guidelines were updated to be more inclusive. For example, a gendered policy that prohibited shirts that show cleavage was revised to ban low-cut shirts, officials testified. Students who think a policy is discriminatory can report it to staff at the school, district and central levels.

“Dress codes are decided at the individual school level and require that schools examine their reasoning and justification for their respective policies,” spokesman David Clarke said in a statement, “and schools must consider evolving generational, cultural, social, and identity norms.

“Also, dress codes must be gender-neutral and cannot prohibit certain types of clothing that are stereotypically associated with one gender, and they must be implemented equally and in a non-discriminatory manner.”