The hats in class policy: Coming to a head near you

Most students say it’s like a tie, no more than a fashion accessory.
Most parents and adults agree it’s an accessory: an accessory to disrespect, bad behavior and a message that since schools can’t seem to enforce the hats in class dress code, they cave to its allowance.
Students have been battling to wear a chapeau in class since Too Sir With Love, Up the Down Staircase and Welcome Back, Kotter.
From the look of school dress code policies around the region, the tide of the battle is finally turning.
Milton, which had been struggling with the problem for years, accepted a student proposal in August that allowed Nute High Middle School students to wear hats during classtime.
“The building administration took into consideration student voice and they proposed in August prior to the beginning of school that hats be allowed in class. We listened to what the students had to say,” said SAU #64 Superintendent Michael Tursi earlier this month.
He said the students agreed that teachers viewed not wearing hats as a sign of disrespect, but that wasn’t the case, they mean no disrespect by wearing hats.
“We decided to give some respect back (to the students) and recommended the change,” Tursi added.
He said the new policy “gives students the opportunity to demonstrate the right to wear a hat won’t affect the educational process.”
Respect is the word most used in arguing to keep the hats.
Every adult outside the school system whom The Lebanon Voice talked to vehemently opposed the new policy.
“It is about respect,” declared one Milton mom who wouldn’t give her name for fear of reprisals against her child who is a student at Nute. “If you go into a church, or a building or a school, you take your hate off. Period.”
While Milton is a community experimenting with the new policy for the first time, Noble High School has allowed hats in class for several years.
And while many teachers and parents along with some students don’t agree with it, SAD 60 Schools Superintendent Steven Connolly said it is far different now than when the older generation was growing up.
Hats used to be just hats, he explained. Now they show what a student believes in, what his favorite sports team is, or what his hobbies are.
He said school administrators are now more concerned with making sure the messages on hats and T-shirts aren’t offensive than anything else.
Even so, Connolly agreed that, viscerally, he really didn’t like the policy, himself.
One school worker who also asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals said administrators in both towns had given up trying to enforce it because they lacked the backbone to do so.
“It’s disrespectful (to wear a hat); they have a dress code and they couldn’t enforce it, so they’re just letting it go, they just give in,” she said.
Craig Bowman of Milton agreed it was disrespectful. He said his son was sent home for wearing his hat a few years ago, and he accepted the school’s decision. Now he says he’s disgusted with the new policy.
Spaulding High School is the lone secondary institution in the area that prohibits hats. But even they have a caveat: Their school handbook states, “head coverings may not be worn in classrooms during school hours except as allowed by teachers within their classrooms.”
A phone call to the Rochester Schools Superintendent’s office redirected The Lebanon Voice to Spaulding High School Principal Peter Weaver, who over a two-week period failed to return several phone calls to further explain his school’s hats in class policy.
Meanwhile, Tursi is taking a wait and see approach.
“We’ll see if it is good,” he said. “As with any policy, if it’s causing a problem we can review it.”