I got a call this morning from Janetta McGensy, the principal at Baird Middle School, who said she had heard about the conversations about the school's dress code on the centralvalleymoms.com blog and also here on Opinion Talk. Over the weekend, I agreed with a parent who objected to the extreme restrictions on hair gel, hair spray, hair clips etc. Take a look at the mom's blog by clicking here.
The short explanation is that everything's fine now. Here's what happened: A wrong dress code agreement was inadvertently sent out to the parents, but a corrected version was to be sent out today.
Baird school sent me a copy of the revised version and there's nothing forbidding hair spray, hair gel, headbands, hair clips etc.
Ms. McGensy said they realized a wrong version had gone out when parents called and told them about the problem. The staff started working on the corrections right away. The principal said they try to work well with their parents, and they should be encouraged to call with their concerns if something doesn't sound right. So it should be all good now.
Maybe someone should look at the stuff they send to parents before they go out, dontcha think?
Mike, you'd think that would be obvious but I guess not. We got a form letter from our daughter's school right before the first day, telling the parents what's expected from the kids. One of the sentences read:
"Every student will be held accountability for having their supplies with them in class each day."
Another sentence shortly after that one had a misspelled word and made no sense at all due to bad structure and grammar. I corrected the paper with a red pen, included some funny quip in the margin and sent it back.
This was from a new school my daughter was about to attend. What impression did they leave me? I would never send out any business correspondence like that.