I was reading an article and came across the following sentence.
“宮崎県の公立の高校や中等教育学校では、８０％ぐらいの学校が下着の色を白と規則で決めています。”
I can figure out the sentence’s meaning from context, but this particular part confuses me:
“宮崎県の公立の高校や中等教育学校では、８０％ぐらいの学校が下着の色を白と規則で決めています。”
What is “と” doing here? Is “８０％ぐらいの学校が下着の色を白と規則で決めています” two phrases connected by と, and, if so, is 下着の色 not the object of 決めています?
Here is the original article, sorry for it’s weird topic lol: NEWS WEB EASY|「下着は白」は学校の規則に必要か 考えるように伝える
This is quite common when quoting.
I reckon と is quoting the text of the rule - i.e. the same as the speech marks used in the headline.
So for the quoted section, “８０％ぐらいの学校が下着の色を白”, is there no verb for 下着の色? Is the adjective 白 fulfilling that role in this case?
There is indeed no verb here. Can’t give a proper answer for why but … 
This quotation particle と makes it sound like “the fact that so-and-so is white, is decided by the rules.”
The quoting verb is omitted. It’s similar to how we say “the law that (says that) you aren’t allowed to steal” where you can omit the “says that” part.
That makes sense, but even still I’m a bit confused as to why 白 is where it is in the sentence. Thanks to everyone in thread for the help.
To me it’s not so confusing, but I did just wake up (so maybe I’m not thinking straight)
下着の色を決める is the core of the sentence
白と marks what they decided the color to be
規則で means “as a rule” or “by rule”
This と is the same kind of と as in となる. We don’t have to get into how になる and となる are different here, but (noun)を(noun)に決める and (noun)を(noun)と決める is a similar set.