Minnesota Kindergartner's Spaghetti Straps Spark Controversy

HUGO, MN — A bout of warm weather in Minnesota created the climate for a controversy over a 5-year-old’s dress in a Twin Cities school district. Emily Stewart said she sent her daughter to kindergarten at Hugo Elementary last week with a light sweater over her dress and jeans underneath of it.

“Having 65 degree weather in April a week after a snow storm is everything to us in the Midwest,” Stewart said on Facebook.

“So, I thought ‘yeah it will be nice out you can wear a dress.’ And that was the end of my thinking. It didn’t occur to me that an adult would look at my 5 year old child and think that wearing a dress was inappropriate.”

According to Stewart, when her daughter arrived at school, she was told that she needed to leave class and go to the nurse’s office. The nurse told her that she needed to cover her body and made her put on a T-shirt.

After school, Stewart said her daughter “started bawling” about the entire incident.

“I asked her when I picked her up, ‘why are you wearing a T-shirt?’ She said ‘I was told I had to put something on because I need privacy.'”

“What exactly is private about a 5 year olds shoulders?” Stewart asked. “Why is it ok to put my daughters bare shoulders before her education? Why was her dress looked at as an inappropriate outfit to begin with? She is 5 why is she being sexualized?”

Principal Jason Healy told Fox 9 that “We are reviewing our protocols at Hugo Elementary. The student dress and appearance policy has been an item of discussion this year in White Bear Lake Area Schools.”

According to the White Bear Lake school district website, inappropriate clothing includes, but is not limited to, “clothing that is too revealing, distracting, or disruptive to the educational process, and other clothing that is not in keeping with community standards.”