Reply to DCPS considering doing away with uniforms?

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

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.[/quote]

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.[/quote]

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. [/quote]

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. [/quote]

$14 for 4 changes of clothes x 3 kids - $168. And if your kid outgrows the uniform, they have to buy them again. No kid is going to wear their uniform outside of school, so you buy two sets of clothes. [/quote]

I have two kids and this has not been my experience. The kids either wear their uniforms for 2-3 years or if they outgrow them quickly, they can be passed down to a younger sibling. My kids rarely change out of uniforms in the evenings and you can get away with as few as 3 sets of clothes each, if they wear them twice before laundering and you do laundry twice a week. I mean, if a struggling parent can't manage to clothe their kids properly, whether or not they are required to wear uniforms won't make much difference. (I agree that if a school wants their logo on the uniforms or has other specific guidelines, then it's a different story. But if you have a loose code, like for example a green or white polo and green or khaki bottom, there is a lot you can do with that, and people won't know if you are reusing same clothes day to day, unlike with regular clothes, which people don't tend to buy multiples for.)[/quote]

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