LOCAL : Antelope Valley High Students Continue Protest of Dress Code

About 60 students at Antelope Valley High School in Lancaster staged a two-hour walkout of classes this morning on the second day of a continuing protest over a new anti-gang dress code.

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies today detained but released two students who allegedly were part of a crowd of about 200 student protesters, some throwing rocks and debris, who on Thursday rushed toward a Sheriff’s Department sergeant who had detained several men off campus.

Deputy Gil Arce said the case against the pair, in addition to the prosecution of a student arrested during Thursday’s protests, will be turned over to the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office for possible prosecution.

School officials and sheriff’s deputies eventually dispersed the students by summoning their parents and threatening to have them suspended or arrested. About 400 students, at Palmdale High School as well as Antelope Valley High School, participated in demonstrations Thursday.

Students, insisting that the district should not dictate how they dress, said they plan to appear en masse at a Wednesday night meeting of the Antelope Valley Union Board of Trustees meeting to demand that the district’s policy be revoked or revised. The policy bans all baseball-style hats other than those issued by the high school and gives school officials broad powers to outlaw attire that they consider gang-related.