A Houston High School is raising eyebrows after its principal sent out a letter to parents earlier this month detailing a newly enacted dress code that they — not their kids— must adhere to.
“No one can enter the building or be on the school premises wearing a satin cap or bonnet on their head for any reason,” Principal Carlotta Outley Brown of Madison High School said in a letter to parents dated April 9. “You also cannot wear a shower cap of any kind in the building.”
According to Brown, the policy is needed to “prepare children and let them know daily, the appropriate attire they are supposed to wear when entering a building, going somewhere, applying for a job, or visiting someone outside of the home setting.” Brown, in her letter, said that parents who did not follow the rules, would not be permitted inside of the building.
As reported by the Washington Post, the new policy follows an incident where a parent was turned away from school premises for showing up in a t-shirt dress and headscarf. “The parents were coming in risqué clothes,” Brown told the Wall Street Journal. “They were coming in a manner that was not presentable for the educational setting.”
Although the Houston educator and Madison High School grad, who is Black, insists that the policy is designed to prepare students for the future, many are saying the decision has racial undertones. Others are calling it classist and elitist.
While parents question Brown’s position —on the dress code and as a school administrator— public outcry seem to place the new guidelines and the less-than-year-old principal overseeing them, in the hot seat.