Court Hears a Teacher Who Won’t Skirt Issue

Roxanne Pittman knows who wears the pants at Pomona Unified’s Yorba Elementary School--and she’s not happy.

It’s men.

Pittman, a teacher at the school since 1989, would love to slip on a pair of crisply pressed slacks for work. They’re more comfy than the ankle-length dresses and stockings that make up her uniform now, she says. And better-suited to the physical demands of teaching young children.

But, for her and other women teachers at three designated elementary schools, that’s against the district’s rules.

Pittman, who considers herself neither feminist nor crusader, is fighting to overturn the no-pants policy for female teachers at the three schools where instructors must follow the same strict dress code as the students.

Her sartorial struggle moves to the courtroom next week in the first test of a state law that says employers, public or private, cannot bar workers from wearing pants to work because of their sex. Pittman and her attorneys argue it violates that law to have a dress code that permits male teachers to wear pants but requires women colleagues to wear skirts or dresses.

“They seem to be saying our brains aren’t as good if we wear pants,” Pittman said.

But school officials and their lawyers contend there is more at stake than hemlines.

Attorney Rickey Ivie said the student dress code is an essential part of the special programs at the schools, which require girls to wear dresses or skirts and boys to wear pants and shirts. For teachers to dress otherwise could undercut that policy, he said. So male teachers must wear ties and slacks while female colleagues don dresses and skirts.

“We need to practice what we preach,” Ivie said.

Ivie and co-counsel Susan E. Amerson will argue in court that the three so-called fundamental schools should be exempted from the law on the grounds that teachers cannot do their jobs properly unless they’re attired properly. Fundamental schools emphasize an old-fashioned blend of discipline and education basics.

Pittman said she brought up the pants law with her supervisors in 1995, never expecting the district would object to ending its pants policy. “I thought they would say OK, it’s against the law.”

But when officials resisted, Pittman went to her union and decided to file a lawsuit last summer.

She has a ready ally in Assemblywoman Diane Martinez (D-Monterey Park), who led female lawmakers on a pants-legged march through the state Capitol as part of the campaign to pass the law in 1994. Martinez says she is “shocked and appalled” the school board would keep women teachers from wearing pants.

“What children learn has nothing to do with whether their teacher’s legs are covered or not,” she said. “The school district is sending the wrong message to children--that it’s OK to violate the law.”

Martinez, a member of Assembly Education and Appropriations committees, said the slacks skirmish has prompted her to draft a bill making school board members liable if they use public funds to break the law.

Even school officials acknowledge that their policy isn’t perfect.

In fact, school board member Rebecca Ryan, who defended the pants policy in the past, now calls it “archaic.”

In a deposition for the case, Yorba Principal Samuel Tharpe acknowledged that custodians and cafeteria workers have been exempted from the dress restrictions. When asked whether it is a good policy for women not to be allowed to wear pants, Tharpe replied: “Can I straddle the fence on that?”

Some women school board members concede they wear pants to board meetings and other events and consider it “professional.”

Board member Nancy McCracken echoed district attorneys in suggesting that Pittman could transfer to another school in the district where teachers are allowed to wear pants. When asked whether a woman teacher in pants can be a good role model, McCracken told a reporter: “My district counsel would shoot me if I answered that.”

The district has offered to make an exception to the pants policy for Pittman because of a medical condition.

Her attorneys, Glenn Rothner and Lisa Payne, object that such an exemption would stigmatize Pittman, who continues to obey the no-pants policy while awaiting a court ruling.

Tom Hollister, executive director of the Pomona teachers union, said that even if Pittman took the exemption, other women teachers are ready to challenge the policy in court.

“It is silly to be talking about this at almost the beginning of the 21st century,” Hollister said. “It is ridiculous to think a woman could be dressed professionally for a business meeting and not for working in these schools.”