Will County Gazette

The Joliet Township school district receives some suggestions from one of their advisory boards.

At their February 21st board meeting, the Joliet Township school board of education received a report from their parent-teacher advisory board, who had met three times so far this school year to discuss various matters and bring some suggestions for changes or improvements to the board for their consideration and possible adoption. They had three smaller policy suggestions, mostly clearing up some language to be clearer and more inclusive, especially regarding some of their disciplinary processes, making sure it was clear what the routine actions are.

“We discovered, through a lot of these discussions and these power struggles, there's different cultural expectations that were brought out in some of those discussions, other things that were brought up was the upkeep of hair,” Julie Adelmann, PPS Coordinator of Joliet West, said. “You know, a student comes into the school and has a hood on her head. And through that power struggle, sometimes behaviors are escalating and eventually we get down to the root cause, which is hair upkeep, if that's braids being outgrown or cleanliness of hair that day. So, we would try to then meet that need in whatever way. Sometimes being a beautician and a dean’s office or a counselor’s office or even the principal's office at times to then try to get the head gear off. But that was an extensive amount of time out of the classroom setting. There's been emotional responses to this that have been escalated to behavior. And sometimes the hair goes on because they're having a bad day or the hoods up because they're just trying to get through the day. We see as they're entering the building after they've walked a mile to school, it's cold out and a hood up and they're being greeted with hoods down, IDs on, hoods down, IDs on.”

The next suggestion the advisory board made to the board of education was a committee discussion around the dress code and attire regulations. The committee had long been discussing the dress code, even since last year, but brought a new suggestion for the board to consider that adopts both the wishes and concerns of the district and more Covid friendly guidelines. The concern is the higher number of hoods, hats, and head coverings that prevent a student from being easily identified. The committee suggested phrasing in the dress code that allowed for headwear to be worn in the school if the students face to be visible by other students and staff and doesn’t interfere with the student’s line of sight.

This was just a first read of the proposed policy and will likely be revised further to give more clear details and expectations. The board did not want this code to be read as about gang identifiers or restriction, as the focus was safety. The board was also confused as a prior suggestion was to ban all head wear, but the committee explained that between kids walking to school, days where hair care and maintenance was too much for students to handle, and just general mental struggles getting throughout the day after covid, this was the best way to meet the students’ perceived needs and wants while maintaining safety in the district. The district was fighting students far too much on the wearing of hats and head wear, so they thought a compromise might be best.