Missing school for a competition cheerleading trip to Hawaii lit
up the news pages and the district office board room a year or so
ago. This time it’s the shortness of the cheerleading skirts. On
the surface it merits a chuckle, yet Gilroy High School Principal
Marco Sanchez’s dilemma is real.
Missing school for a competition cheerleading trip to Hawaii lit up the news pages and the district office board room a year or so ago. This time it’s the shortness of the cheerleading skirts. On the surface it merits a chuckle, yet Gilroy High School Principal Marco Sanchez’s dilemma is real.
Mr. Sanchez, new to GHS this year, has been dead set on enforcing the dress code from the outset. It’s a tone setter and no doubt one way to influence the culture at the school. His dilemma materialized, apparently, when a girl being disciplined for wearing a too-short skirt to school pointed out that the cheerleader’s skirts, which they wear on spirit days, don’t meet the dress code, either. What to do?
Mr. Sanchez is on the right track. It’s important to set standards at the school, and it’s important to be able to demonstrate the ability to use discretionary judgment that makes sense. In this case, he gave the cheerleading skirts a pass on school spirit days because the outfits had been bought and paid for. That makes sense.
So does the idea of requiring the girls to wear some kind of leggings to school on spirit days next year. The outfits, after all, are the athletic attire for the cheerleading team.
Sensible modification here makes sense. Parents should not be worried that wrestlers will soon assert that wearing singlets to school on game days should be allowed. And swimmers won’t likely protest angling for the right to wear their Speedo suits to class.
Therefore, there won’t be any reason to require the swimsuits to be baggy or the singlets to have more straps. Which brings us back to the cheerleading uniforms next year. The simplest answer is to have cheerleaders wear sweatpants or leggings under their uniforms. That way the athletic uniform is intact, and so is the GHS dress code.
For this year, Gilroy can rest easy. Principal Sanchez has this controversy well in hand.
“They already bought their skirts. I’m not going to make a big to-do,” he said. “Next year, they’ll be at least a couple inches longer across the board to make sure there are no issues.”
No issues with the GHS cheerleaders? Now that would be something new.
