Flowers Banned From Shelton 8th Grade Dance Over Allergy Concerns

Students heading to an eighth-grade dance at one Connecticut middle school on Friday night will have to leave the corsages and boutonnieres at home.

Flowers will not allowed in the Shelton Intermediate School Cotillion because of fears that they may trigger allergy attacks, school administrators said Wednesday.

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"Due to medical concerns associated with servere allergies to certain flowers, students with flowers will not be permitted into the school," Shelton Intermediate School Headmaster Kenneth D. Saranich said in a statement to the school community. "The exchanging of flowers for the cotillion is not a function of the cotillion, nor endorsed by the school.

"For all students to have a safe and enjoyable evening we require that everyone involved comply with this request."

The cotillion is the eighth-grade dance, according to articles in the school newspaper.

The flower ban isn't the school district's first formal dance crackdown: Shelton High School was in the national spotlight earlier this month when, days before its prom, school headmaster Dr. Beth Smith announced over the intercom that backless dresses and those with slits or cutouts wouldn't be allowed at prom.

That prompted students and parents to complain because some girls would not be able to wear the dresses they had already purchased.

Superintendant Freeman Burr responded, saying the student handbook, which all students receive at the beginning of the school year, outlined the guidelines for appropriate dress.

A committee made up of seven female staff members reviewed more than 150 prom dresses and utimately determined that six were inappropriate.

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