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Board adopts employee dress-code adjustments and transitions to LSBA policy templates
Summary
The board approved committee-recommended changes to the employee dress policy (GAMD), clarified grooming and uniform exceptions, and voted to adopt Louisiana School Board Association (LSBA) policy templates for the 0, 100 and 200 series.
The St. Mary Parish School Board on July 10 approved changes to the employee dress policy and voted to transition several policy series to Louisiana School Board Association (LSBA) templates after a report from the policy committee.
Mister Mancuso summarized committee changes to policy GAMD, recommending removal of the word "matching" from a scrub uniform requirement and adding an exceptions line to allow modified dress for spirit days, holidays and days students are not on campus. The committee also tightened grooming language to require hair that is "clean, neat, and well groomed" and removed a prior reference to multi-dyed hair while retaining a prohibition on extreme colors or styles that create a distraction. A length standard for skirts, dresses or shorts was revised to "no more than 2 inches above the knee." "Under exceptions, the first bullet that was added just clarified that, in schools with combination grade levels, it would be at the discretion of the principal," Mancuso said.
The committee recommended moving the district to the LSBA policy library for the 000, 100 and 200 series to align local policies with the statewide model. Mancuso said several policies would be removed, repealed or replaced and that the proposed replacements had been reviewed by the board attorney. The board approved the transition by motion; Mancuso made the motion and Miss Anselm seconded.
The board also amended policy 204.1 (public participation) to remove the phrase "unless otherwise allowed by the board president," leaving a clear expectation of a three-minute limit per speaker per agenda item while preserving the ability of board members to ask follow-up questions without counting against the speaker's time. Mancuso described the committee's intent: "The assumption is that you get 3 minutes to speak... the expectation should always be you have 3 minutes."
The GAMD revisions were moved by Mancuso and seconded by Miss Dennis; the board approved both the dress-code changes and the LSBA transition by voice votes.
