Few attend strictly to hear discussion
After listening to a discussion on a uniformed dress code proposal at Tuesday night’s Indian River School Board meeting, Antonio Lopez, his two sisters and mother promptly stood up and walked out of the meeting at Sussex Central High School. It was clear they had come for one reason. And as they walked out of the still-new high school, the Georgetown Elementary School student’s opinion on a potential policy was also clear.
“It’s not fair,” Lopez said of a potential dress code in Indian River schools. “In the beginning of the year, they say to be unique. Now they’re saying to wear the same stuff.”
School uniform committee chairman Dr. Donald Hattier — also a board member — has been working with his fellow committee members on studying a potential policy since November. After receiving overwhelming support from parents of district students via a survey early this month, Hattier briefed the board Tuesday on the committee’s progress.
“Uniforms alone will not solve all of the ills,” said Hattier, who has argued for months that a uniformed dress code will improve focus and discipline in schools. “But it can have an enhancing effect.”
Hattier presented a few potential downsides of a district-wide dress code, such as initial cost to the parents, potential rebellious behavior and enforcement issues. But he also said the potential code could improve self-esteem by rendering the social and economic differences between students, as shown by clothes, invisible, as well as saving parents money and, as he has continuously detailed, improving focus and discipline.
In presenting a supporting argument for a potential policy Tuesday, he did so with overwhelming support. About 75 percent of the roughly 4,500 surveys returned to the district by parents in 8,100 households supported district officials at least continuing a discussion on school uniforms. No formal vote has yet been taken and none is scheduled. Work is continuing.
But few seemed to attend the meeting to hear the first uniform discussion following the survey’s return. The Lopezes were the only ones to stand up and leave following the discussion.
Andrea Lopez, Antonio’s mother who accompanied him at Tuesday’s meeting, said she supported the discussions through the survey, which was sent out with January report cards.
“They’re good for the kids,” commented Andrea Lopez, saying that uniforms would alleviate the social pressures that come with clothes and save her money. “We can buy good clothes only for the weekends,” the mother of three district children said, standing in the lobby after Tuesday’s meeting.
On an eerily small manikin — which became the source of a couple of Hattier’s jokes — district officials displayed an early uniform proposal. Dressed in a khaki skirt and a dark blue polo-type shirt, the manikin wore what might become one of several choices of dress under a potential future policy preliminarily modeled after those at Southern Delaware School of the Arts and in the Woodbridge School District.
Hattier said Tuesday that, even if a policy is approved, students will likely have a choice of color schemes and confirmed that a lot of work has yet to be done. Explaining the process to the other board members, he also confirmed that there are some parents that think a little more like Antonio Lopez, and a little less like Andrea Lopez and the rest of the apparently supporting 75 percent.
“I am finding an increasing vocal minority,” Hattier said, adding to laughs that some had a few choice words for the board member over the phone before abruptly hanging up. “They didn’t think we’d get this far.”