GONZALES, Texas — Violating Gonzales High School’s dress code is not a crime, but some of the offenders are about to start looking a lot like convicts.
Soon after classes begin Aug. 25, violators of the district’s beefed-up dress code must don navy blue coveralls unless they get another set of clothes from home — or serve in-school suspension.
The outfits aren’t just styled like prison jumpsuits — they’re made by Texas inmates.
“We’re a conservative community, and we’re just trying to make our students more reflective of that,” said Larry Wehde, Gonzales Independent School District deputy superintendent.
The policy in Gonzales, about 70 miles east of San Antonio, has drawn criticism and speculation that all the district will accomplish is to set off a new fashion trend.
Kids wearing spaghetti-strap tank tops, extra-baggy pants, cargo pants or T-shirts might find themselves finishing the school day in the drab one-piece outfits. Boys with earrings or facial hair, girls in miniskirts and anyone in clothes that show underwear face the same fate.
Some parents and students are crying foul. “They’re not little prisoners,” said Mary Helen Douglas, who has a 17-year-old son starting his senior year.
The 2,650-student district has ordered 82 coveralls, which are most often sold to county jails, state mental institutions and juvenile prisons.
Wehde said the point of the jumpsuits is not to embarrass students but to cover them up.
The jumpsuits aren’t the only option for dress-code violators from fifth through 12th grade. School board President Glenn Menking said parents can still bring a change of clothes, or they may request that the student go to in-school suspension instead.
The senior class president, Jordan Meredith, said some students plan to turn the policy on its head — instead of considering the jumpsuits a punishment, they’ll make them cool.
Meredith said he’s already heard from some who plan to deliberately violate the dress code to get a jumpsuit to wear.
Meredith is considering buying a jumpsuit of his own to wear for the entire school year.
“I don’t think that jumpsuits are going to work, because my friends actually, instead of it being a punishment, they’ll see it as an opportunity to be like, rebels,” said Meredith, who also isn’t sure whether his hair, dyed bright fire-engine red, will pass muster. “I don’t think there’s going to be enough jumpsuits for everyone in the school.”
Menking said the new policy was approved in July on a 5-0 vote along with an even stricter dress code that banned T-shirts in favor of collared shirts.
