School Uniforms Hit a Dead End

You probably won’t convince East hampton Board of Education member Don Coolican that school uniforms are not a good idea. The problem for Coolican was the other eight board members were not about to be convinced it was.

Sensing that, when Coolican made the motion at Monday night’s meeting to send out a survey to get feedback from parents on the idea, he suggested that if a member of the board was against school uniforms at the middle school, they should just vote against sending out the survey.

“No matter what this board does, if we don’t have the support of the parents in this endeavor, then it would be a terrible mistake to try and push it,” Coolican said. “On the other hand, even if we have the support of the parents, I know there are people on this board who don’t feel we should put the kids in uniforms no matter what, [that] we should try and make sure the dress code is being enforced and that would be the best way to go, to leave it alone and just try to tighten it up, enforce it.

“If you feel that way you should say so now. Because there is no reason to go through with a survey and say I don’t want it anyway. … I would recommend you vote against the motion.”

And they did.

The motion made was for the chair to appoint an ad hoc committee to construct a survey and send it out to parents of middle school students. By a vote of 8-1 the school board rejected the motion thereby bringing an end to the idea of school uniforms for the middle school.

Coolican, who said he still thought strongly there should be uniforms, had said at previous that some of the reasons to go this route included no decision-making about what is appropriate, eliminating clothes bullying and saving parents money.

The previous board agreed to gather information and have the issue reviewed by the policy committee, which met Oct. 25.

The of the committee included adding language to the policy which would reference appropriate clothing as described in the handbook, conducting a survey as a way to get feedback from the community, synchronizing the middle school and high school dress codes, and ensure that dress codes at all schools include appropriate length for shorts. Also included in the recommendations was a statement saying that all staff and parents need to be much more vigilant about enforcing the handbook rules regarding dress.

Coolican and others on the board did agree the dress code needs to be enforced better.

However, whether it was the previous board or the current one, support for school uniforms at the middle school was nowhere to be found.

“I have a hard time only making this a middle school issue. I don’t like the issue to begin with,” Chairman Mark Laraia said. “I don’t think we need uniforms. I think the message [concerning dress code] has been sent to the administration that they need to buckle down. That they need to address this issue more.”

Laraia did agree with the previous policy committee that the dress codes for the middle school and high school need to be brought in line with each other.

“There are some discrepancies between the middle school and the high school in the handbook and we need to tighten that up,” he said.

For others, spending any money on an issue that was more than likely dead on arrival made no sense.

“I will not support spending whatever a stamp is today to get a survey out the door when I don’t believe it is going to go anywhere,” board member Ken Barber said.

Board member Bill Marshall said he wasn’t opposed to school uniforms and believes there can be value in it, but the timing was such that there are more important priorities for East Hampton to be discussing.

“School uniforms can be a divisive issue within a community,” he said. “I think we need to bring the community together around getting a budget passed. I think we need to bring the community together around getting the high school renovations passed. I don’t think the timing is very good right now. I don’t think we need to bring up something that’s potentially divisive. The kinds of communities where it seems to have worked, didn’t describe this kind of community.”

Though the idea of school uniforms might have failed, Coolican did succeed in increasing the awareness of school dress codes, the importance of which wasn’t disputed.

“I think it’s important that they learn, as do many adults need to learn, what’s appropriate to wear in different situations,” Vice Chair Joanne Barmasse said. “That’s all part of being responsible, whether you’re a sixth grader, a 12th grader or in college. … I think kids have to learn that. It’s part of being responsible.”