For Bayonne High School students, going back to school in September will mean a whole new look.
The school district will require all students except for high school seniors to wear uniforms.
Earlier this year, Bayonne High School Principal Richard Baccarella headed a committee of parents, teachers and administrators to explore the possibility of implementing a uniform policy for the high school.
Bayonne elementary schools began enforcing the policy in the fall of 2006, requiring students from kindergarten to eighth grade to wear uniforms.
On June 6, the Board of Education voted to expand the program to include grades nine though 11 starting in September.
“Seniors this year are exempt,” Baccarella said. “We felt it was unfair to make them purchase uniforms for one year. So seniors will get a one-time perk.”
Grade 12, however, will be included in the 2008-2009 school year.
Baccarella predicted some problems getting everything in place at the beginning of the year, but expected the program to be running smoothly within a short time.
Penalties
While the high school will require uniforms from the first day, penalties for noncompliance will not be tabulated until Monday, Sept. 10, when the school begins full-time classes.
“The first three days of school are half-days,” he said. “While we expect students to wear their uniforms, we know there can be problems. So we won’t penalize anyone on those days. But the following Monday, the penalties will apply.”
Unlike elementary schools where students have a narrow choice of styles, high school students have a larger choice of styles and color combinations. Students can wear polo, oxford, turtleneck, sweat, or crew neck t-shirts as long as they are white, black, gray or garnet and bear the school logo. The school district has designated four vendors from whom logo uniform shirts can be purchased.
Pants or skirts must be black or tan, but can be purchased anywhere as long as they fit the school policy on length and proper fit.
“We understood that high school students are more fashion conscious, and we wanted to accommodate them,” Baccarella said.
In expanding the program to the high school, Baccarella said the committee started from scratch, meeting with students, parents, teachers and administrators to determine an interest as well as what kind of uniforms should be required.
Parents, teachers and administrators were carefully surveyed, with the result showing almost 75 percent approving of a uniform policy.
In the weeks leading up to school’s start, Baccarella has been answering questions that parents and teachers might have, hoping to make the transition easier.
The logo design harkens back to when Baccarella attended Bayonne High School. In those days, athletes won a letter for their sweater by participation in a team effort.
“This brings back the tradition,” he said, but added that the letter on the uniform also provides additional security. “Someone without the logo may not be a student of Bayonne High School and may not belong here.”
Baccarella also wanted to find a symbol behind which students could take pride, such as the “R” that is strongly associated with Rutgers University.
“When you see that ‘R,’ you know right away what it means,” he said. “We wanted something that would say Bayonne.”
‘Look and feel good’
While Baccarella said statistical evidence that grades and behavior improved as a result of students wearing uniforms was not yet available, he believed the policy would allow students to “look and feel good,” improving the overall educational climate.
“Anything that improves school culture benefits all areas of success,” he said.
As with most policies the school implements, students who fail to follow them face disciplinary action.
This involves a number of steps, warnings for the first two violations, then detention. Continued violations bring longer terms of detention. A student who violates the rules seven times loses the right to participate in extracurricular activities.
“We are required under law to provide students with mathematics, English, and social studies, but football, choir and other extracurricular activities are a privilege, not a right. Those activities get forfeited,” he said.
But each step of the way, administrators reach out to parents to try and find out why the student is in noncompliance to determine if there is some other problem, such as lack of money or a turbulent home situation.
“We are trying to make it as easy as possible for the students to comply,” Baccarella said. “With 2,000 students getting uniforms this year, we know we’ll have some problems. But we believe that once kids get used to the idea, they will like the uniforms, too.”