Parras student fights stigmatizing dress code violators
Parras Middle School student Ava Szymanski argues for changes to the district’s dress codes. Photo Parras Middle School eighth-grader Ava Szymanski has long taken issue with school dress codes — the guidelines that state how a student should, or should not, dress at school, as well as punishments. Last month she did something about it, setting up meetings with both Redondo Beach Unified School District Board Member Brad Waller and Parras Principal Jonathan Erickson. That had an immediate effect: School-provided clothing, passed out to students violating the code, would no longer obviously identify those students as rule-breakers. On Tuesday night, she made her pitch before the RBUSD School Board to see if there were any steps the district could take in helping her make a difference. Girls, Szymanski said, are more often set up to fail because the clothing available for them to buy often skirts against code, while the code itself is designed to police female bodies in particular. “Girls cannot be blamed — rather than punishing us, others should be taught to not sexualize girls instead,” Szymanski said. “That can lead to feeling certain things, to thinking of themselves in a…
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