Lafayette began allowing students to wear hats in the first semester of the 2017-2018 school year. The new dress code rule involving hats was one of many policies discussed in a series of meetings starting with faculty members in January, and eventually parents, students and teachers in April.

“We talked and got feedback about what if we allowed students to wear hats and why don’t we allow students to wear hats,” Principal Karen Calcaterra said.

One issue with the policy that continuously came up was that wearing a hat would obscure students faces on camera, which could end up being a potential safety issue. The school worked with St. Louis County Police Departments Officer Jim McDonald in order to clear the issue up and discovered that even while wearing a hat, it’s still possible to identify a student on camera and it would not be a safety issue.

“If the changes were horrific or backfired on us, we would just go right back to not allowing students to wear hats,” Calcaterra said.

So far, there hasn’t been any negative consequences of the newly implemented policy; however, if the renewed rule does cause trouble in the future, the faculty and staff are fully prepared to revert back to the former dress code policy.

“Quite honestly, we think its gone very well. People wear hats in a respectful way. I love that I’ve seen a lot of Lafayette school spirit hats and St. Louis hats. I think that it’s been a pretty seamless transition,” Calcaterra said.

The new policy has also made it easier for faculty and staff, who in the past were required to chase down kids who ignored the dress code. It was a constant annoyance to always be reminding students to take off their hats.

“Let’s face it: kids were wearing hats and then administrators were chasing them around. It just didn’t feel good, ” Calcaterra said.