A Delco school board walked back its ban on hoodies after a student dress code protest turned to chaos

A Delaware County school board has rescinded a policy banning hats and hoodies after a protest against the new rule escalated into a brawl eliciting an all-county police response and the arrest of multiple students.

In a packed, four-hour emergency meeting Wednesday evening at Academy Park High School in Sharon Hill, parents and students spoke out against the dress code mandate, which passed a board vote, 8-1, last week and went into effect Monday.

Some parents said their students needed to wear sweatshirts for warmth, while others said they could not afford to buy their children new clothes to replace their hoodies. Other speakers criticized what they said was a hasty decision by the Southeast Delco School Board last week to ban the clothing.

On Tuesday morning, students at Academy Park High School walked out of class, gathering in the auditorium to protest the new restriction. But after the action, police said, multiple fights broke out, involving hundreds of students inside and outside the school. The school went on lockdown, state and county law enforcement responded to the fight, and “numerous” students were arrested, Sharon Hill’s police chief, Richard Herron, said in a statement.

The school board ultimately walked back the policy, requesting that students keep their hoods down during class, but condemned the chaos that transpired.

“Having all of the riots and everything, where the police had to be called in and everything was not necessary,” school board president Theresa Harris-Johnson said Wednesday night. “You could have asked to meet with administrators.”

“Doing what you did yesterday, you didn’t resolve anything,” she said.

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The districtwide motion to immediately ban hats and hoodies was proposed at a meeting the previous week by board member Sheree Monroe Whitsett.

Initially, Whitsett’s proposal included also immediately instructing students to lock up their cell phones during the school day, but some other board members, as well as Academy Park’s principal, voiced security staffing concerns, predicting “mass chaos” would follow a districtwide cell phone restriction.

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During the meeting, Whitsett said the proposal was in response to teachers asking students “multiple times” to take hoods off their heads, earbuds out of their ears, and put phones away while in class.

“At some point, we need to get this learning environment together. We need to get some control,” she said. “And the best way to do it is to eliminate things that they want to do, which is no cell phones and no hoodies on heads. … If you’re cold, wear a sweater.”

Additionally, she said, if students were “doing something devious” and “choosing poor choices instead of being a scholar,” they would not be able to hide their faces from security cameras with hoods.

Whitsett and other school board members did not return an email requesting additional comment Thursday.

During the Oct. 27 meeting, Academy Park principal William Vogt told the board that the school’s current protocol instructed teachers to write up students for insubordination if they didn’t put their hoods down after being asked. Vogt also said students were told at the beginning of the school year that a ban on hoodies was possible if they did not see more compliance with removing hoods.

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In a statement, Herron said the melee at Academy Park, which has around 1,200 students, occurred after school officials “attempted to have a peaceful conversation with the students about the recent policy changes involving clothing.” School officials and officers were attacked, he said, and parts of the high school lobby were damaged.

Some videos posted to social media show police handcuffing and pinning students down, which some parents at Wednesday night’s meeting worried was excessive force, NBC10 reported.

As of Thursday, it was unclear the number of students arrested and charges issued, and Herron did not return a call seeking comment.

The investigation is active, Herron’s statement said, and being handled by Sharon Hill’s detectives.

In a statement, the district said “school officials are working with local authorities to identify those parties involved and appropriate consequences will be issued per our district code of student conduct.”