Trials and Tribulations

I know a lot of you have been waiting for me to post. I’ve had a lot going on ;) and haven’t had much spare time. I know you’ve read the papers and are scanning ahead already trying to see what I have to say about it. Well sorry to disappoint...

I’m not blogging about that. But I do want to talk about another hot topic going on in our district. The uniform/dress code committee. Many people and students have been waiting to hear what the verdict is. I was happy to get an E-mail from the committee chair about a week ago saying that the committee was going to make its recommendation to the board at its December meeting. I thought that would be nice that a committee I volunteered for would wrap up at my last board meeting.

I had suggested looking into this a few years ago so I was pretty excited to see another member show interest. There was some early disappointment when many community members were excluded from the committee, but in the long run I thought we ended up with a nice group. But as with most committees each meeting saw one or two fewer people attend.

I did my homework and submitted it to the committee. Basically what it came down to was this; Uniforms and/or uniform like dress codes had no lasting effect on academic performance, attendance rates, or behavioral issues. I made packets of information available for each member of the committee. Some of the studies cited dated to the 90’s. Some.

So what was to be the last committee meeting was had last week. Imagine my surprise when what I thought would be a meeting to draft a final presentation, became a discussion of maybe we didn’t do enough. WHAT? The high school, one middle school and one elementary took a dress code violation survey near the beginning of the year, the superintendent informed us that there has been one “serious” dress code violation in all the elementary schools in the last six years, the middle and high school tallied less than ½ percent of students cited for violations, and the committee came to what seemed uniform consensus (pardon the pun) that inappropriate dress really isn’t a problem here. Not to mention the two sets of clothes thing. I could blog forever about that.

Now we must back up and take a closer look. One member commented that some of the uniform data regarding academics, attendance and behavior dated from the 90’s and implied that things could be different now. I suppose they could have sprinkled some magic academic dust on the uniforms of today to make kids more apt to learn if they wear them. And maybe the uniforms of today are made of a higher standard of cloth that makes kids want to come to school just so they can wear the uniform. Do I hear Somewhere Over the Rainbow playing in the background?

This is why I hate committees. If there was some information out there contrary to what was found that made a profound difference somewhere, why wasn’t it already presented and so convincing that the committee was swayed?

My last talking point on uniforms is this- Why on Gods green earth would you make 5000 kids buy khakis and polos when inappropriate dress is a non-issue in our district and no lasting benefit has been proven? And the real kicker- We are a public school district so apparently you can opt your child out of wearing the uniform anyway.

PS: This blog will soon be moving to www.KelliePatterson.com