Where t-shirts featuring the X-Men and Harry Potter once reigned, now there are blue- and white-collared polo shirts. Where jeans once covered the legs of primary schoolers, now there are khakis. School uniforms have come to the city’s public primary schools and they seem to be a real hit.
The Board of Education passed a resolution this summer initiating the uniforms in the city’s public primary schools.
“They are wonderful,” said Ken Scott, a fifth grade teacher at the Calabro School on Park. “We should have done this 20 years ago. If you come to school looking like you are here to play football, you are going to play football.”
Parents who clustered around the school’s exits as they waited for their kids to finish their classes all seemed to agree. “We love them,” said Rose Marie Scoccimarro, as her son Joseph, a second grader, showed off his blue polo shirt and khaki shorts. “Every morning we know exactly what to wear.”
“It’s no longer a fashion show,” said Rose Costigan, whose first grader Lindsay chose to wear khaki-colored “skorts” to school Tuesday. Skorts have a flap of material across the front that make them look like a skirt even though they are really shorts. They seemed to be the most popular choice among girls at Calabro last week. Most wore them with a white top, while most boys chose to wore blue tops.
“There are some choices,” explained David Anthony, the school board president who has helped to bring the uniforms to the schools this year. “That’s why we call them school colors instead of uniforms. Every child can wear the white shirts with the khaki bottoms and then they can accent their choices with a school color.” Calabro’s color is blue. Wallace’s color is green and Connors’ color is burgundy.
“This program has been so successful because it is the least restrictive school colors program possible,” said Anthony. “They can wear whatever shoes they want. They wear different colors. Shirts with or without logos. Everybody is just following a specific theme.”
School officials say that if the parents of high schoolers support the idea, a school colors policy may be adopted for the middle and the upper schools as soon as next semester.
“That is next,” said Robert Crespo a school board member and mayoral aide who has authored school uniform resolutions in the past. “The goal of this has always been to get it up to the high school. Every time I pass by there with my wife she’s always talking about the way the kids look. Now we see that this works with the smaller kids. The kids look good. They look classy. There used to be a stigma attached to the idea of school colors, but now they realize that it works well.”
Atmosphere of learning
Bart Riley, who was recently named principal of the Brandt Middle School, said that he thought the dress code would help create an atmosphere conducive to learning in the middle school.
“It puts everybody on the same level,” he said. “Students would no longer be competing for who has the best clothing or the best sneakers. My opinion is that it would definitely help.”
The real question is, can the board push the policy through at the high school level? Anthony argues that although high schoolers will resist, it will ultimately help them prepare for life in the work world once they graduate.
“Some parents say that the way you dress is an expression of your individuality,” he said. “But when you are in the work world you have to dress up and where the appropriate clothes whether that be jacket and tie or a uniform. This is no different. You can still wear what you want to and express your individuality when you are not at school.”
But even the parents who love the idea for their primary schoolers are none too sure.
“I could not wait to get my uniform off,” said Scoccimarro, who went to Catholic school. She and her son, Joseph, agreed that eighth grade would be a good time to stop wearing the uniform.
Teachers in the Calabro school also were skeptical that a school colors program could be extended successfully to the high school.
“In high school, the kids are very fashion-conscious,” said fifth grade teacher Frank Migliaccio.
Anthony says that ultimately the decision will be left to the parents. “Our job is not to impose our views,” he explains, “but simply to bring to the school system what the parents want.”