More Teachers Face a Lesson in Dressin’

In passing dress standards for teachers and staff this week, the Placentia-Yorba Linda school district is joining a growing number of school systems that are looking into attire codes for adults as well as students.

For the past several years, there have been attempts in Denver; Maryland; suburban Atlanta; Hartford, Conn.; and New York to force teachers to dress better. At the same time a more widespread movement has tried to put students in uniforms.

The policy that the Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified board passed unanimously is nearly identical to a model the California School Boards Assn. created for interested school systems.

James Morante, a spokesman for the school boards association, said the number of districts asking for copies of the model has increased greatly during the past year.

Teachers in Placentia-Yorba Linda have little problem with the idea--as long as the standards are general and do not mandate certain types of clothing.

“It’s innocuous,” said Eileen Fetters, president of the Assn. of Placentia-Linda Educators, the teachers union. “I don’t think there is anything anyone can disagree with too much.”

The two-paragraph policy passed Tuesday says, “[D]istrict employees serve as important role models both at school and in the community. . . .

“The Board expects staff during school hours to wear clothing that demonstrates their high regard for education and presents an image consistent with their job responsibilities.”

“They haven’t done anything,” Fetters said.

If the board had required male teachers to wear ties and women teachers to wear skirts, she said, the union would have argued that those changes should be negotiated.

That’s what happened with the Santa Ana Unified School District, where dress standards for staff were much more stringent than those in Placentia-Yorba Linda. The school board imposed a dress code, and the teachers union filed an unfair labor practices complaint. The Public Employees Relations Board ruled the district could institute the dress code, but the effects of the rule must be negotiated, such as additional pay to buy the clothing and to pay cleaning bills, said Winston Best, the district’s assistant superintendent of human resources.

The two sides are negotiating, he said.

School officials say there hasn’t been a big problem with the way staff members dress. Placentia-Yorba Linda gets perhaps a complaint or two a year.

“There wasn’t a chip on anybody’s shoulder or anybody’s ax to grind,” said board President Judy Miner. “We just thought it was good to have a general philosophical statement about looking professional.”

The teachers’ dress codes considered across the country have varied, but they are pushed by a belief that staff members influence students by the way they look as well as how they act or teach. Some codes would ban the most informal kinds of dress, such as T-shirts, shorts and jeans. Some people have wanted to go back to the days when male teachers wore coats and ties and women wore pantsuits or skirts.

Mike Myslinski, a spokesman for the California Teachers Assn., said his group wasn’t worried by the vote this week or the larger move toward dress standards. “We have no wide separate concern or alarm on the issue.”