North Hopkins updates dress code for students

Image
Body

Most of the items on the North Hopkins ISD school board’s agenda were routine for this time of the year as they moved to approve changes to handbooks and accept pay scales Thursday last week.

Some of student handbook changes include updates the dress code, superintendent Brian Lowe calling the update an effort to “keep up with modern times.”

“After COVID, one thing we [the administration] noticed that a lot of the girls had come back with the little nose piercings because they wore them with their masks,” Lowe said. “We’re going to allow that now. It’s a different time, and we realize that now.”

Another dress code change is giving more leeway students to wear head coverings inside a classroom if the teacher approves.

“If that’s something that helps the student focus in the classroom, we’re going to leave that up to the teacher,” Lowe said. “In common areas, we’ll keep our tradition rule [of disallowing head coverings] there.”

After bell schedules were updated last year to accommodate COVID-19, the traditional schedule will be put back into place, Lowe said, pending no further state or federal guidance.

The board also is coming close to closing a energy service and energy savings agreement, a project in which the current expense should be balanced out by future energy savings. Lowe said solar panels would be installed on the roof of campus buildings. A timeline has not set yet.

“We have preliminary agreements ready to sign,” Lowe said. “We’re just having both sides’ legal counsels look everything over.”

The parking lots are being resurfaced before the school year starts, Lowe said, and the secondary school hallways were be painted red and white to be more consistent with the rest of the campus. A more in-depth look is being taken at the future greenhouse’s location and drainage.