When it comes to students wearing hats, it’s a discipline battle David Ryan isn’t interested in fighting.

“This isn’t the issue that needs attention,” Ryan said. “We need to pay attention to learning.”

And this year, the Nashua High School North principal and his fellow staffers won’t be worrying about hats anymore, after deciding to allow students to wear hats to school for the first time since the building opened a decade ago.

The change started as a pilot program, but Ryan said he has seen only positive effects and that the policy is here to stay.

It’s a policy change that sets North apart from high schools in the region. Across the Nashua River, Nashua High South prohibits hats, as do most other school districts, citing respect and security as the primary reasons for banning them.

Ryan said the change was discussed for a few years, as teachers and administrators struggled with too many students being sent to assistant principals for discipline issues surrounding hats. The incidents were straining student-teacher relationships and keeping students out of class unnecessarily.

“We started talking about where this rule came from and why it was in place,” Ryan said.

What he found was interesting. When Nashua had only one high school, students were allowed to wear hats. When the schools split, however, both schools adopted policies prohibiting such headwear.

Ryan said he talked to staffers who worked at the old Nashua High School when considering a change. Everyone with whom he spoke, he said, assured him there were actually fewer discipline issues when hats were allowed.

There are still some limitations on what students can wear. A hat can’t hide the majority of their face, and students still can’t wear hoods, to ensure that security cameras can identify students.

North students are pleased with the change, and many have been using the opportunity to show off their favorite sports teams and brands.

But not everyone is happy with the new rule, or lack thereof.

Community members spoke out about the idea on Facebook last week, concerned that the policy change would mean students wouldn’t learn that removing their hats is a sign of respect.

Others have said that changing school rules when students don’t follow them doesn’t teach respect.

But Ryan said the new policy isn’t an example of administrators caving to students, it’s an example of the school listening to the student voice and working with them on a reasonable change.

Still, most other schools in the region had their own reasons for prohibiting hats.

Hats aren’t allowed at South, where Principal Keith Richard said he sees no reason to change the policy.

While South and North are often linked – the schools send students to classes in both buildings, for example – they’re two separate institutions, he said. And when North students take classes at South, they take off their hats.

“It’s a respect issue,” Richard said. “You’re walking into a place of education, you take your hat off.”

Hollis Brookline and Merrimack high schools also don’t allow students to wear hats.

Hollis Brookline Principal Cindy Matte said that while there are always a few students who are frequently asked to remove their hats, it hasn’t been a major issue.

Showing students that there are certain places where hats shouldn’t be worn is important, she said.

“It presents a better appearance,” she said. “They don’t go to work and wear hats. … It’s preparing them for life in a lot of ways.”

Merrimack Principal Ken Johnson has had the opposite experience of Ryan.

Until three years ago, students were allowed to wear hats at the school. And while hat-wearing students weren’t a discipline issue, Johnson said that when the school implemented security cameras, it was determined that hats could be a security risk.

He said the student population adjusted well, and that it’s a nonissue. And he said he believes that whether students are allowed to wear hats at school doesn’t make or break their level of respect.

“I don’t think we made it a respect issue,” he said.

Ryan said there will always be opposition to rule changes and that he’s pleased with the school’s policy change and has already been seeing the benefits.

So far, he said, he has received positive feedback from staffers, that the level of respect between students and teachers is improving and that classrooms are able to focus less on asking students to take off their hats and more on actual learning.

There have been no referrals to assistant principals for hat-related issues so far this year, he added.

“If a student is comfortable, feels safe and has a strong relationship with their teachers and is learning, isn’t that what we’re supposed to be doing?” Ryan said.

North juniors Benjamin Schatz, Brendan Finnegan and Alex Claude said they knew a lot of students who got in trouble in past years for wearing hats, and that they always thought the rule didn’t make sense.

This year, however, they’ve noticed far fewer issues in their classes and in the hallways, despite far more students wearing hats.

“If you can express yourself in school, that’s always a good thing,” Finnegan said.

Ironically, Ryan said, many of the students who consistently wore hats when they weren’t permitted no longer wear their hats today.

“They were just looking for a rule to break,” he said. “I think this is a very simple fix to alleviate some of the tension that was in the school.”

Automotive teacher John Finocchiaro said he hasn’t noticed any major changes in the school, except that teachers no longer feel the need to remind students to take off their hats.

“You pick your battles when you’re dealing with students,” he said. “It’s just a hat.”

And Finnocchiaro said he wasn’t concerned about students not learning respect because of the change. If their parents don’t teach them, he said, a rule against hats at school likely won’t.

Ryan said social norms are evolving, and while he wants students to know there are times when wearing a hat would be disrespectful, he doesn’t believe school has to be one of those places.

“To me, the hat policy was part of the dress code, which has changed over time,” Ryan said. “School is a place where changes are needed. … I’ll take the flak for this because I am seeing the benefits.”

Danielle Curtis can be reached at 594-6557 or dcurtis@nashua
telegraph.com. Also, follow Curtis on Twitter (Telegraph_DC).