Students express uniform opposition to dress code

By Kate Pastor

The mere thought of khakis and skirts has some students spewing venom on the Internet.

“I’m not wearing a [expletive] skirt,” wrote one student in all capital letters on the wall of a new 360-member Facebook page, Petition Against Uniforms in RKA, founded by students at the local middle/high school.

Principal Lori O’Mara of The David A. Stein Riverdale/Kingsbridge Academy recently opened a dialogue at the school over whether to institute a uniform policy. Students opposed to the idea have found more than one public way to make their disdain for it heard. Their angst is on full display on both Facebook and an online petition that includes posted comments. Now, parents will get a chance to weigh in.

Ms. O’Mara last week sent them a survey asking loaded questions like, “In general, do you agree that a Uniform Policy could help contribute toward a positive atmosphere of order and learning in a school?” Though it leaves the impression that the school’s leadership has already decided the stricter dress code would be preferable, parents will have their say.

Again.

It was not long ago that they soundly rejected the idea. According to Randi Martos, who was president of the parents’ association at MS/HS 141 for six years and currently is chief of staff for Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz, the issue was raised in 2006 when Schools Chancellor Joel Klein created a default school uniform policy that allowed individual schools to opt-out if they chose.

“Parents were fairly strong against uniforms,” she said, speaking on her own behalf and not as a staffer for Mr. Dinowitz.

She said that back then, the parents’ association overwhelmingly voted the idea down, and students also rejected the idea. This time, a parents’ association member who did not want her name used, said the group had not yet even discussed the matter.

However, according to Ms. O’Mara’s preface to the parent survey, the School Leadership Team has considered whether the policy would provide “equal footing” for students of various socio-economic backgrounds, whether it would remove dress-related distractions from classrooms and whether it would enable faculty to better focus on teaching by not having to enforce the school’s dress code.

Ms. O’Mara said in an e-mail that she had already spoken with teachers about uniforms and that “parent and student input is a very important factor in this decision-making process as well.”

The last time the issue was raised, the school decided on a dress code that banned items like doo-rags, belly shirts, spaghetti straps, tank tops and flip flops, Ms. Martos said. If students came to school with what she called “a wardrobe malfunction,” parents were either called to take them home, or if they could not be reached, students were given leftover baggy T-shirts from school events to cover exposed navels or rear ends, whatever the case may have been.

“The enforcement issue was everybody’s responsibility,” she said.

Now, Ms. Martos said, she hopes the school is not looking for expedient means for teachers to avoid monitoring students to ensure they are dressed appropriately for school.

“Let’s try enforcing the school policy that’s already in place,” she said.

This is part of the March 11, 2010 online edition of The Riverdale Press.

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