Cape school officials: Few issues with new dress code

A majority of students returning to classes in the Cape Girardeau School District for the first day of the 2012-2013 school year complied with new rules on clothing, district administrators said Thursday.

Elementary principals said they purposely were not too strict about the new code for the first day but did remind a few students in the case their clothing did not fit the code.

"Pretty much everybody got it anyway," Franklin Elementary principal Rhonda Dunham said.

At the junior high, assistant principal Alan Bruns said a few notes were sent home to remind parents that students need to make sure their clothing follows the dress code, but issues there were also minimal.

"There hasn't been problems at all, really," he said. "I've seen some striped polos, and a few T-shirts that won't work, but nothing big at all."

The new dress code, which was approved by the school board in February, requires students to wear a solid-color collared shirt or school-themed T-shirt and jeans or khaki bottoms of a certain fit.

At Cape Girardeau Central High School, staff had to ask around 25 of the school's approximately 1,100 students to wear clothes that matched the dress code, according to principal Mike Cowan, although the violations weren't major and due more to students misinterpreting the rules.

Around 60 high school students, all members of the Student Senate, were out of compliance with the code, but with permission. The students were dressed in superhero-themed costumes so freshmen and new students could easily identify them as guides on the first day of school. Cowan promised during the course of the dress code discussions last year that he would allow students to continue wearing what they always have on "spirit days" at school.

Pertinent address:

1000 Silver Springs Road, Cape Girardeau, MO

215 N. Louisiana St., Cape Girardeau, MO

205 Caruthers Ave., Cape Girardeau, MO