District beefs up attendance policy; relaxes dress code

Less restrictive dress code

“I struggle to see why we are as restrictive as we are. It results in kids being referred to the office for things that aren’t egregious.””

Patrick Lamb, FMHS Co-Principal

FORT MADISON – Fort Madison High School students can expect a different look in the district’s dress code this year.
Co-Principal Patrick Lamb told the Fort Madison School Board at Monday’s regular meeting that the district may have a little more lenient stance with student attire.
Lamb said he and  Co-Principal Adrian McKay spent more than 30 hours going over the current dress code trying to make the policy easier to understand and enforce.
“It’s hard for me to justify that clothing is a distraction to education unless its egregious,” Lamb said.
“We’re looking at being a little more lenient. As long as you’re not showing parts of your body that shouldn’t socially be shown. Come to school with marijuana leaves, we’ll ask you to change. If we can see your bra, we’re going to ask you to change.”
Lamb said the high school spends too much time dealing with dress code violations.
“I struggle to see why we are as restrictive as we are. It results in kids being referred to the office for things that aren’t egregious,” he said.
“Adrian and I spent 30 hours on dress code issues alone. It’s not a good use of our time.”
Lamb said school officials are still putting limitations on what students can and can’t wear, we just aren’t looking at being as restrictive as we once were.”
In a related issue, Lamb said he would like to put pre-Covid attendance policies back in place.
He said the average daily attendance is at 90%, which is 5% below the district and state goal of 95%.
“When we had the policy in place, we were at 95% and then Covid affected us and attendance rapidly fell off,” Lamb said.
Now that we’re no longer in a pandemic, we’d like to return to the policy.”
Prior to Covid, any student with five unexcused absences would be dropped from a class with a failure.
Lamb specified that those are unexcused not excused parent-notified absences.
“These are unexcused, not those where you call in due to being ill as long as you haven’t exceeded those allotments,” he said.
In other action, the board:
• approved, 6-0, the 2023-24 insurance program with the Iowa Association of School Board’s Safety Group Insurance Program with a premium of $482,147.96, an increase of $4,550.21.
• approved, 6-0, the renewal of the district’s agreement with Southeast Iowa Regional Medical Center for athletic training services.
•approved, 6-0, new meal prices for the 2023-24 school year, including continuing free breakfasts for all students. Lunches for PreK through 6^th grade will move to $3.25 from $3 and students in 7^th-12^th grade will pay $3.50 per lunch. Milk will stay at .45 per carton, while adult meals will go to $5.00 from $4.25.