DCPS considering doing away with uniforms?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If uniforms are so great, why do virtually none of the city’s best performing DCPS schools have them?

Because uniforms are feature of poor schools, not the wealthy, high performing WOTP schools.

Many if not most tony private schools WOTP have uniforms, or at least a strict dress code (e.g. sports jackets and ties for boys).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If uniforms are so great, why do virtually none of the city’s best performing DCPS schools have them?

Oh come on. You know the dynamics of the neighborhoods that require them; not the gentrified areas.

Actually various gentrified Capitol Hill schools require them, including Brent and Maury. Not DCPS, but Latin also has a uniform.

[Anonymous]

My child attended a Title 1 school, and I didn't like the uniforms. The khaki pants were too thin for winter, they stained easily, and the boys ran through the knees too easily. I also dont need the government to tell me how to dress my child.

At our school, the donated uniforms were all smaller sizes, and a lot of low income families had kids in the upper grades. Also, low income parents often get hand me downs from neighbors, church, Mary's Center etc. These dont necessarily include navy polos.

My child has also spent time in a European school. Uniforms there often offer more choices, with two or three acceptable colors for shirts and pants.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My issue with this debate is that essentially what many of you are saying is that poor children should be happy to just wear their uniform all the time. In my experience, as a poor kid myself and then as the mom of a kid in a uniform school in DCPS, children would like to wear a Spider-Man shirt or a dress that’s not navy and collared or jeans instead of khakis. Suggesting that families ignore that desire and prioritize uniforms seems to me to be yet another way to make poor people feel crappy. Sure, kids need clothing. They need clothing that is clean, appropriately sized and weather appropriate. It doesn’t have to be a school uniform. If the school did not require uniforms, children and families would still be buying one set of clothing. They would not also have to sacrifice their individual preferences as you are suggesting. When my kid graduated from her uniform school and started at a school that doesn’t require uniforms, she was very happy to start being more experimental with fashion. I don’t think that should be limited to kids whose families can afford to buy an entire second set of clothing.

Thank you! One or more PPs keeps forcefully arguing that uniforms are not a hardship, when several of us have provided evidence that it can be.

Also, yes, it irks me that kids WOTP are allowed individuality and can wear that Spider-man t-shirt or whatever according to their whim, but that my brown EOTP kid is not allowed to. It's part of a larger pattern of harsh, punitive rules regulating children's clothing/hair at majority black/brown schools across the country.

Oh please, then pick a school, move or transfer to one that doesn't have uniforms. It has nothing to do with skin color and you sound racist. We've had our African American principal criticize some of our white kids hair for being too long. But, since they are white and he is not, I'm assuming that is ok with you?

PP, is this an elaborate piece of performance art in an attempt to illustrate white privilege, or are you really that dumb?

You solutions to the challenges of poverty are for poor folks to move or "transfer" to a different school. You seem totally unaware that:

1. Moving is expensive.
2. Adding commute time to the schedules of people who often already spend many hours on public transportation and work multiple low wage jobs is a huge hardship.
3. Poor people often have bad credit, which severely limits their options for where they can live. There are actually seminars offered by landlords who own property in poor areas that are intended to teach wealthy suburbanites how to operate rental property in poor and minority areas because it can be so profitable. Landlords have a captive market of people with bad credit. They can buy properties for almost nothing and do nothing to maintain them. Poor people with no options cooperate with landlords in concealing code violations from inspectors because they can't afford to move. That's how you end up with entire buildings with no functioning toilet and buildings with no laundry facilities.

"Just move" is one of the least informed suggestions for dealing with challenges posed by expensive uniforms that I've ever heard. Being ignorant isn't a sin, but your compulsion, oddly common in today's racists, to --- apropos of nothing --- accuse the people trying to educate you of racism is pretty reprehensible. I never thought I'd miss the straightforward racists of the rural south of my childhood, but at least they were honest.

[Anonymous]

Does anyone know of a good place to donate funds to help people buy school clothes (uniforms or not) for DCPS kids?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Does anyone know of a good place to donate funds to help people buy school clothes (uniforms or not) for DCPS kids?

If you have kids in DCPS, I would ask your school social worker about donating uniforms and clothing. Many schools do have clothing closets, but they are not always well stocked, particularly for older, larger children. If your school doesn't use a uniform, I'd still talk to the social worker about other schools in the same cluster as you who might need support and ask to be put in touch with those schools. You could contact the school social workers of a particular school directly if you wanted to also. In general, they have need of a lot of extra clothing from PK3-K because of accidents and wear out, and then also in upper grades because people do not donate size 12-14 for elementary schoolers, despite many elementary schoolers in DC wearing size 12-14.

[Anonymous]

Is there any actual information about this besides the tweet?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Does anyone know of a good place to donate funds to help people buy school clothes (uniforms or not) for DCPS kids?

If you have kids in DCPS, I would ask your school social worker about donating uniforms and clothing. Many schools do have clothing closets, but they are not always well stocked, particularly for older, larger children. If your school doesn't use a uniform, I'd still talk to the social worker about other schools in the same cluster as you who might need support and ask to be put in touch with those schools. You could contact the school social workers of a particular school directly if you wanted to also. In general, they have need of a lot of extra clothing from PK3-K because of accidents and wear out, and then also in upper grades because people do not donate size 12-14 for elementary schoolers, despite many elementary schoolers in DC wearing size 12-14.

12-14 husky too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think it gives the schools a bit of school spirit, and as far as I know it's not really an economic burden on anyone. I think it should be a school-by-school decision. Not sure why it would have to be a policy imposed by the top.

It's an economic burden on a fair number of people, PP. I have always felt that if DCPS is requiring students to come wearing uniforms, they should be required to pay for those uniforms, because it is a burden for families with very limited incomes.

But every Title 1 I'm aware of has a huge supply of uniforms that it can and does give to such families. Way more awkward to take more identifiable clothing donations and clothes are an economic burden in general. Also, the disparity between clothing is real. In my kid's T1 PK4, Fridays mean pristine Boden outfits on half the class and a small set of kids in obvious hand-me-downs or still in their uniforms.

Many schools have uniform closets that kids can get uniforms from, but it's not unlimited. The "support" that is available takes months to access. As a former school social worker, what I will tell you is that for families with multiple children in a school, the burden is pretty great. It may not be a big deal for you to drop $100 on uniforms for the year, but if you have 3 kids of 3 different sizes and need uniforms for all of them and you are also only making about $500/month, it really is a challenge. And that doesn't even touch the cost of keeping the uniforms clean enough to wear. I think that uniforms do solve the problem of your kid wearing pristine Boden and their friends wearing ratty hand-me-downs, but the reality is that most families need to purchase uniforms at the start of the school year, and many of them do not have the money to do so.

But the kids have to buy clothes, and the uniforms aren't actually that much more expensive than anything else. You can buy a full uniform set for $14 from brands like Cat & Jack.

No. Kids do NOT have to buy clothes. I have means and I haven’t purchased new school clothes for my kids in over 8 years. They both get hand me downs from cousins or I buy lots of clothes from clothing exchanges. I don’t wish to buy new clothes for the sake of buying new clothes. It’s a waste of money and bad for the environment.

I also have friends that are without means that rely on hand me downs and buy on Monday’s at the thrift store. Your post wreaks of entitlement. $14 will fee my family dinner for 2 nights.

again ... they can get used uniforms

sure, they could get second hand combination of [insert color] polo and khakii in correct size/fit, or they could get any color/size/ polo , khaki, blazer, culottes, etc. you seem to think uniforms are the only type of 2nd hand clothing. Can i introduce you to Goodwill Industries?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If uniforms are so great, why do virtually none of the city’s best performing DCPS schools have them?

Because uniforms are feature of poor schools, not the wealthy, high performing WOTP schools.

Many if not most tony private schools WOTP have uniforms, or at least a strict dress code (e.g. sports jackets and ties for boys).

Actually I think most don’t. NCS (not upper)/STA are outliers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If uniforms are so great, why do virtually none of the city’s best performing DCPS schools have them?

Because uniforms are feature of poor schools, not the wealthy, high performing WOTP schools.

Many if not most tony private schools WOTP have uniforms, or at least a strict dress code (e.g. sports jackets and ties for boys).

Actually I think most don’t. NCS (not upper)/STA are outliers.

Yep, most do not have uniforms. I think the Cathedral schools are outliers, along with maybe the British School.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think it gives the schools a bit of school spirit, and as far as I know it's not really an economic burden on anyone. I think it should be a school-by-school decision. Not sure why it would have to be a policy imposed by the top.

It's an economic burden on a fair number of people, PP. I have always felt that if DCPS is requiring students to come wearing uniforms, they should be required to pay for those uniforms, because it is a burden for families with very limited incomes.

There are ALWAYS tons of hand me downs at our school. I think eliminating uniforms will just highlight socioeconomic disparities. I saw this in my HS and it created mean rich kids and poor kids with self esteem issues who also then became too materialistic. Whenever it was game day at my HS we wore our sports uniform and those were the best days. So easy. The rest of the time I fretted about what to wear and felt very insecure despite being solidly middle class

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If uniforms are so great, why do virtually none of the city’s best performing DCPS schools have them?

Because uniforms are feature of poor schools, not the wealthy, high performing WOTP schools.

Many if not most tony private schools WOTP have uniforms, or at least a strict dress code (e.g. sports jackets and ties for boys).

Actually I think most don’t. NCS (not upper)/STA are outliers.

Yep, most do not have uniforms. I think the Cathedral schools are outliers, along with maybe the British School.

Not sure what you're saying here. Traditionally, Episcopal schools follow models inherited from England, where school uniforms have been standard for centuries. Almost all Catholic schools in this country have gone with some type of uniform from the get go. We're not short on either Episcopal or Catholic schools here in DC, where public schools appealed to few UMC families before this century outside Upper NW.

[Anonymous]

All of this talk about poor kids accepting hand-me-downs is making me feel some kind of way. I can't quite articulate why, but it's rubbing me the wrong way.

[Anonymous]

At our school, we collect donated uniform hand-me-downs and sell them for a nominal amount at school events. Both high and low SES families pay a little for secondhand uniforms, with the very modest proceeds to the PTA. Systems works well.