Alachua School Board approves countywide uniforms for K-12

 Next year, students throughout the county will be under stricter dress code regulations, the school board approved in a 3-2 vote Tuesday.

However, board members made last minute amendments relaxing the original proposal and backed off calling the new standards “uniforms.”

Board chair Virginia S. Childs said the changes were not that drastic and the new rules are not uniforms in the way most people think of them such as those that police and firefighters wear. They are merely a uniform standard to which all students will be required to dress.

The dress code requires that students wear collared shirts, but they can be of any solid color, instead of the original proposal of only white, navy blue and the school’s colors. Pants can also be of any color. And female students will be allowed to wear dresses, as long as the dresses meet the length and coverage requirements in the dress code.

With all of the last-minute changes, board member Tina Pinkoson was wondering what, if anything the rules changed from the previous dress code.

“This is what we’ve got in place, but they haven’t enforced it and there is really nothing that’s different except that they can’t wear a T-shirt,” Pinkoson said.

“We’re reinventing the wheel here”

Pinkoson, along with board member Eileen F. Roy, opposed school uniforms.

Roy said she didn’t think the switch to school uniforms would make much of a difference.

“I would certainly be in favor of this motion, if there were any evidence that I could see that correlated uniform wearing in schools with academic achievement,” Roy said. “However, I have not seen that.”

She said the overwhelming majority of public response she received was against the motion.

“This is the very antithesis of encouraging them to make their own decisions on the most basic aspects of their life, which is what to wear in the morning,” Roy said.

Board member F. Wesley Eubanks disagreed with Roy’s argument. He said that Polk and Osceola, the two counties the proposed school uniform policy was modeled after, were doing better in key categories and that school uniforms might be part of the difference.

Both Polk and Osceola have more students than Alachua on free and reduced lunch, but have higher graduation rates.

Eubanks also argued that safety was a concern and that school uniforms would make the dress code easier for principals and teachers to enforce.

Board member Barbara Sharpe addressed some of the other concerns she had heard about school uniforms including that it would hamper free expression and individualism.

She said students have many positive ways to show self-expression outside of fashion.

“We have to act to end the peer-driven fashion shows entering our classrooms that create distractions,” Sharpe said.

She said the board’s decision shouldn’t be too dependant on what students think they want.

“Of course, [students] are just going to say that they don’t want to uniforms,” Sharpe said. “But we as board members, it is incumbent for us to do what it is that we think is necessary to bring all of our children in. It is up to us to level the playing field.”

Pinkoson said she worried that measures like this were part of a larger trend in the schools taking on too much.

“From the beginning, when I got on the school board, I have been incredibly frustrated with the amount of responsibility that’s being handed over to our schools in raising our children,” Pinkoson said.

The two sides were not able to reach a middle ground, but with a slight majority, the decision to switch to school uniforms was approved.

The motion approved by the board mandates school uniforms for grades K-12. The board passed on the other three options: school uniforms for grades K-8, school uniforms for grades K-5 or no school uniforms.