Sixteen schools adopt uniform policy

By Emily Richmond (contact)

Monday, May 2, 2005 | 10:45 a.m.

Sixteen Clark County campuses will adopt mandatory uniform polices after meeting the School Board's requirement that at least 55 percent of surveys returned by parents be in favor of the stricter dress code.

Seven elementary schools and nine middle schools will join 15 other campuses already enforcing "standard student attire" policies after surveying parents this winter.

Schools will decide this spring on acceptable colors, styles and fabrics. The district regulation requires that elementary schools allow students to wear jeans.

Elementary schools that will add the standard student attire in August are: Frias, Herron, Jydstrup, Lincoln, Martinez, Miller and Thiriot. Guinn, Hyde Park, Jerome Mack, Monaco and Orr middle schools also received enough community support to add the policy, as did Brown, Johnson and Lawrence junior high schools and Chaparral High School.

Two schools, Bob Miller Middle School in Green Valley and Bonanza High School in the southwest region, fell short of the required 55 percent and will not add uniforms to the campus requirements.

Miller Principal Tamathy Larnerd said he was disappointed that "yes" votes accounted for just 51.2 percent of the total votes.

"We were very close and that's tough," Larnerd said. "But we're not going to dwell on sour grapes. My job as principal is to serve my students and their parents and the parents have spoken."

Lisa Twiddy, whose daughter is a seventh grader at Miller, said she and her husband were split on the decision whether to vote in favor of the dress code change.

"He was for it and I was against it," Twiddy said. "We ended up voting against it."

Twiddy said she appreciated the arguments being made by supporters of the policy. Her own daughter has experienced teasing from peers for not dressing in the latest trendy fashions, Twiddy said.

"But there's always going to be better and worse, richer and poorer," Twiddy said. "You can't shelter kids all their lives, they have to be prepared for the real world. Learning to deal with those kinds of pressures is part of growing up."

Ronnie Robbins dropped off her son Roland, a sixth grader at Miller, this morning, before taking second-grader Rosalie to nearby Vanderburg Elementary School. Robbins said she voted in favor of the new dress code, noting that it was easier to get her daughter, who attends a mandatory uniform school, ready in the mornings than her son.

"You just pull out the uniform and you're done, that's it," Robbins said. "It looks nice. It looks like a student."

Rosalie, who was clad this morning in khaki pants and a white T-shirt with Vanderburg written across the front in blue and green letters, said she would have preferred to wear blue jeans to school. Roland, dressed in jeans and a red and white Hawaiian patterned shirt, said he was relieved that he wouldn't have to change his style come August.

"I like being my own person," Roland said. "I don't want to look like everybody else."

Miller students were asked to write essays either for or against the standard student attire policy in their English classes, Larnerd said. Of the essays in favor of the stricter dress code, reducing opportunities for students to be teased or bullied was a common theme.

"We have students here who come from households of extraordinary means and we have kids who can't afford to buy their own lunch," Larnerd said. "Standard student attire would have leveled the playing field."

Larnerd said he was surprised that only 479 of the more than 1,300 ballots mailed out were returned. But while he considered that turnout low, it was still higher than the 447 ballots for Bonanza High School, which has an enrollment of more than 2,700 students.

The number of families returning ballots varied from a low of 42 for Thiriot Elementary School, which opens in August, to a high of 479 at Bob Miller. At Fay Herron Elementary School, which has over 1,300 students enrolled on a year-round calendar, 97 ballots were returned. Because 80 of those ballots were in favor of "standard student attire," the approval rate was 82.5 percent, well above the required minimum percentage.

The surveys were mailed directly to families by the district's research and accountability division with the results tabulated by central office staff.

Parents mailed back ballots with either the "yes" or "no" answer bubble filled in, said Karlene McCormick-Lee, assistant superintendent of research and innovation. In the case of schools where the "yes" votes just barely cleared the required 55 percent hurdle, the ballots were also counted twice by hand, McCormick-Lee said.

The School Board's revision of Regulation 5131, which governs student attire, was fiercely debated the past year.

Some parents argued uniforms have no place in public classrooms and noted that there is no research that shows a definitive link between attire and student achievement. Supporters say uniforms improve student behavior and the school's atmosphere, eliminating the competition to keep up with fads and making socio-economic distinctions less apparent.

Others, including the Nevada ACLU, criticized the School Board's threshold for demonstrating parental support for uniforms. The bar was set far too low, said Gary Peck, executive director of the Nevada ACLU.

Schools are required to show only that a majority of the people who return the ballots are in favor of uniforms, rather than a set percentage of the total school enrollment, Peck said.

"The process is not at all credible," said Peck, whose organization is backing a class action lawsuit brought by parents who say the district's uniform policy violates their civil rights. "When you send out 1,300 surveys and get back 97 and consider that a sufficient response, it's obvious you're not interested in honestly hearing from people. All you're interested in is pushing ahead with a policy you've already decided is going to happen, no matter what."

Under the revised district regulation, parents who do not want their children to attend a "standard student attire" school are allowed to seek zoning variances to campuses that are not following the stricter policy, provided there are classroom seats available. It may be especially difficult for families in the district's northeast region may find it difficult to secure variances, where six of the 11 middle schools will be "standard student attire" for the 2005-06 academic year.

The district regulation also requires schools that adopt standard student attire policies to offer assistance to families for whom buying uniforms poses a financial hardship.

At Herron, located in the district's northeast region, 99.4 percent of the students qualify for free and reduced-priced meals. Anne Phillips, a teacher at Herron coordinating the campus uniform policy, said vendors have offered to donate clothing for needy students. The PTA and staff are also considering setting up a low-cost clothing closet, where families could trade in gently used outfits for larger sizes, Phillips said.

"The purpose is to take the focus off things other than student achievement," said Phillips, who noted that she plans to follow the dress code herself. "This will help us build a sense of community and team spirit."