A school dress code is nothing new. Even schools that don’t have uniforms usually have some type of dress code. It might include how long items like shorts and dresses need to be. It might ban certain words or images from t-shirts. The dress code would vary from school and school and ideally function to help students dress in an appropriate way for learning and so that nobody is offended.

Sometimes school dress codes go too far. For example, one male teen in Texas was suspended for breaking the dress code. What did he do? He wore fingernail polish, something that is allowed for female students but not male students.

More recently, in Canada, a teenage girl was sent home for breaking her school’s dress code. What did she do? She wore an outfit that her female teacher thought was “distracting.” Apparently her school’s dress code is vague enough that anything a teacher considers distracting breaks the dress code.

What did this teacher find so “distracting”? The 17-year-old girl was wearing a white turtleneck under a knee-length black dress. Doesn’t sound very distracting does it? In fact, she looked really cute. She probably felt pretty and self-confident as she headed off to school that morning, but shortly after she arrived at school she “was signaled out in front of her class and told her outfit was inappropriate…she was sent home in tears.”

Her father, Christopher Wilson, is outraged by the teacher’s decision to single out his daughter who he feels was dressed very appropriately. He went live on Facebook to share what happened. Watch the video below to hear what Wilson and other members of the community have to say about this teen being sent home because she wore a turtleneck and a knee-length dress.

It’s honestly hard to understand what the teacher was thinking when she decided that this outfit was inappropriate for school. As one comment on this video reads, “What I was expecting cleavage and a mini skirt, whats wrong with her outfit.”

Do you think this teen was dressed in a “distracting” way? Have your children ever been sent home from school for breaking the dress code? What do you think this school could do to prevent other students from being sent home for wearing outfits that actually seem appropriate?