No more jeans or T-shirts for Dixon Middle students?

PROVO — Students at Dixon Middle School may soon kiss their jeans goodbye — along with nose piercings, decal T-shirts and big fuzzy slippers.

None of these items will be allowed this fall if the school's proposed dress standards are approved.

"It's a parent-driven initiative that we are excited to support," said Taran Chun, Dixon Middle assistant principal.

However, students interviewed are neither excited nor supportive of the proposal. "It should be the kids' choice to decide what they want to wear," said Dixon Middle eighth-grader Cameron Gagon, 13.

Parents' views are mixed. They get to vote on the issue while the students do not.

Parents of incoming seventh-graders voted during a meeting at the school, 750 W. 200 North, on Wednesday night. Parents of students who are currently in the seventh and eighth grades at Dixon Middle will vote in a meeting May 1.

School administrators plan to tally the votes and announce a final decision May 2. The school's dress-standard committee says 80 percent parent support is needed for the proposal to pass, according to Dixon Middle principal Rosanna Ungerman.

The dress-code proposal would require students to wear collared shirts, but they could wear a plain T-shirt underneath for the layered look. They could wear khaki, brown, green, navy or black pants.

Shorts or skirts below the knee would be allowed. No logos would be permitted. Earrings are the only piercings that would be allowed, but other safe, moderate jewelry would be OK. Pajama bottoms would be out while flip-flops would be in.

About a dozen students modeled dress standard attire during Wednesday night's meeting.

Lupita Uribe, 14, was one of the models but said she is against the policy. "I think it's better without it," Uribe said, adding she owns seven pairs of jeans.

Last September, the school's PTA formed a committee of parents who were either for or against school uniforms.

The committee studied dress-standard policies at Davis School District's North Layton Junior High School and Granite School District's John F. Kennedy Junior High School in West Valley City.

The committee informally surveyed Dixon Middle parents via phone. For student input, they took essays from one of the school's English classes.

LeAnne Arnold, Dixon Middle PTA member who headed up the committee, said the main goal of the dress code is to eliminate gang-affiliated attire; reduce safety concerns; discourage clothes that tout economic differences; and ax immodest, inappropriate and offensive dress.

"We want the students to focus on education, be more confident and better behaved," she said.

Parents and students debated the issue Wednesday night.

"Some boys don't like to wear collars. And what if one day you don't feel good and you just want to wear sweats and a T-shirt?" said parent Jennifer Olivas, 34.

Sporting jeans and a green T-shirt with a skateboard logo, her son, Austin Olivas, 12, said, "People should just wear what they want to wear."

Parent Leslie Rife, 45, said she has mixed opinions but would probably vote for the dress code. "A collared shirt isn't bad. Some parents don't hold their kids to the same standard I do," she said, using ripped jeans as an example.

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