Board member Rachael Parker, also on the committee, said she’s not sure about requiring specific uniforms, but changes in the high schools are needed.<\/p>\n
“The way kids are dressing now is inappropriate,” said Parker. “We have a good dress code. It may be just a matter of enforcing it.”<\/p>\n
Some teachers and others have complained publicly about students’ attire.<\/p>\n
One district employee, Scott Campbell, wrote to the Journal Star saying: “Everyday, boys come to school with their pants sagging to the point where it’s starting to be offensive. They need to cover their chests, bellies, shoulders, and wear pants that fit … the school dances are worse.”<\/p>\n
Richwoods High School Principal Steve Ptacek said they’ve cracked down on the dress code, noting some students have been suspended. “When you tell a kid two and three times to pull their pants up, and they still don’t listen, obviously, warnings are not going to change the behavior,” Ptacek said.<\/p>\n
Randy Simmons, principal at Peoria High School: “I see all the advantages with having a dress policy – you can spot in an instant a kid who doesn’t belong in your building – but I also don’t believe uniforms control behavior, I think it’s the culture of the building that does.”<\/p>\n
Simmons said it also would be on top of a host of other changes at the district, including closing Woodruff High School, which will nearly double the number of students at Peoria High next fall.<\/p>\n
Before this year, about a dozen primary and middle schools had dress uniforms. At the start of the 2009-10 school year, all but the high schools added dress uniforms.<\/p>\n
Whether the recently expanded school dress uniforms had any effect depends on whom you talk to. Some principals at the elementary school level say they’ve seen little to no change.<\/p>\n
Renee Andrews, principal at Whittier Primary School, said uniforms cut back student among “the haves and have nots.”<\/p>\n
But Michael Barber, principal at Irving Primary School, and John Wetterauer, principal at Charter Oak Primary School, say they saw virtually no changes.<\/p>\n
Barber, like Simmons, attributed behavior to the school’s culture. “It’s not really the clothes, it’s the teachers,” Barber said.<\/p>\n
All three agreed some parents struggled to purchase uniforms, and in many cases the schools or others donated clothing to families.<\/p>\n
Brett Elliott, assistant principal at Roosevelt Magnet School, said he has seen a change at the K-8 school.<\/p>\n
“At first, I didn’t like it. I thought having a lot of the artsy kids here – that having an option allowed them more artistic freedom,” Elliott said. “But I have noticed it’s a little more calm this year. There’s been less office referrals. If you look at peer pressure, it balances out the haves and have nots. But there’s also a different group of students, different teachers. It’s hard to say.”<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Dave Haney can be reached at 686-3181 or dhaney@pjstar.com.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Read the original article from Journal Star<\/a>.<\/p>\n Distributed via Chicago Press Release Services<\/a><\/p>\n Pants on the ground or not, Peoria high schoolers may be in store for some belt-tightening next year. Midway into the first year all District 150 primary and middle schools adopted a dress uniform code, school officials now are considering whether to extend the same policy into higher grades, or just cinch up the current […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-382612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=382612"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382612\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=382612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=382612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=382612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/img><\/a>
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