I have a daughter who will be starting high school next year. Because the public schools in our area are terrible, and because I want to try to get her to become an engineer (I'm a civil engineer/architect), I'm enrolling her in a private school for the coming school year. All of our family loves it and we feel that it's the perfect choice (she got a good scholarship, which helps too). The only thing that concerns me is the dress code.
This is a rather "preppy" school, and while there isn't a uniform, there is a strict dress code (for example, boys wear dress or chino pants and a collared, button-up shirt). What concerns me is that this dress code requires that girls wear a skirt, skorts, or something similar, along with a collared top or a modest sweater. Here's the relevant lines from the dress code passage that they sent us as part of admission materials:
Appropriate bottoms include skirts, skorts and collared dresses, all of knee length and worn at the waist line (jeans are appropriate only on approved "out of dress code" days)
Tops are to be collared casual or dress shirts including polo shirts, blouses and turtlenecks. Shirts which are made to be tucked in shall be worn tucked in.
My concern is that my daughter is 14, and having her wear a skirt every day to class makes me a little nervous, especially because it's a co-ed school and there are bound to be boys there with sex on the mind, and I don't want my daughter to be the target. What can I do to be sure that she is prepared? I know that every girl will be dressed similarly to how she will be dressed (any knee-length skirt and any blouse is okay, within limits; it is not a uniform), and the boys will be dressed nicely as well, but this does concern me.
Just to be clear, I have no objections with a skirt being a part of the dress code; after all, one of the points of a dress code is to teach students how to dress in a professional environment. I just want to make sure that my daughter will be okay and will be able to meet the dress code while at the same time not being made a target by overzealous boys.
Anyone have any suggestions?