Published: April 22, 2009 05:49 pm      

Just say no to uniforms

Plan will hurt morale

I am writing in protest of the possibility of uniforms for students of Taylor Community Schools. One of the few periods in a person’s life that they can express their individuality is as a student, and students should be allowed that freedom within a specified and enforced school dress code.

We currently have an excellent dress code in place. However, it is not enforced consistently for all students. Our administrators need to enforce this for everyone, regardless of who the student is or the status the family may have within the school system.

I guarantee that if you give any student a long, ugly T-shirt to cover inappropriate clothing that peer ridicule will alleviate the problems quickly. Why punish everyone instead of dealing with a few individual problems? Taylor kids have a rough enough time in the community, being ridiculed because of Taylor’s past financial problems. Do we really need our students being the butt of more jokes because they are forced to wear uniforms?

We are not a parochial school. We are a middle- to low-income public school system and such a dress code will lower the morale of our students and cause a decline in enrollment because some families will move to a school system where uniforms are not required. My daughter has spoken with several excellent athletes who will be seniors at Taylor and are planning to take their talents to other school corporations if this policy is put in place.

If uniforms became a countywide requirement, or even a Kokomo-Center requirement, then it would not be as big of an issue. But why subject our students to this embarrassment when other schools in the county do not try to force such an issue?

Another issue with uniforms is they are not body-friendly to all students. I have two daughters, one is very thin and the other is not. Based on how difficult it is to find clothing that will fit them now and the stores I am limited to, I know uniforms will not be available in the sizes necessary to fit them properly without alterations. As a single parent this is not something I can afford, nor can a lot of other parents.

Polo shirts on larger people or girls with larger chests look awful and emphasize any problem areas. I don’t want my daughter, or anyone’s children, going to school looking bad or being called fat because of how the uniforms make them look. Also, the proposed school uniforms are unisex. My daughters do not and have never desired to dress like boys, which is how the uniforms make the girls look. I strongly feel that children are not robots or clones and should dress like a member of the sex that God made them unless they choose to dress otherwise.

A second issue being discussed is segregating classes by sex, having only same-sex students in a classroom. First of all, I thought that segregation was illegal and secondly, how is Taylor going to pay the additional teachers required to implement this policy? Does this mean if a boy wants to take a class that contains predominately girls and there isn’t a teacher or enough boys to take that class that he will be denied the right to take that class? How fast can you say, lawsuit?

Students need the opportunity to interact with each other on a daily basis, regardless of race, sex, religion and any other discriminatory factors. This interaction prepares them with how to deal with others in the future, something everyone needs to be able to do, especially in today’s culture of diversity.

The next Taylor board meeting is Thursday, May 14 at 7:30 in the High School Media Center. I strongly urge all parents and students who are against the proposed uniform and/or same-sex classroom policies to join me and other parents and students at this meeting to show the school board that these are not issues we will accept without a fight. Our children’s constitutional rights are at risk and if we allow these policies to go into effect, who knows what will come next?

In the United States we protect and value our freedom, something our armed forces are fighting and dying for right now! We are not a socialist or communist country, and if we don’t fight for our children’s rights, who will?

Kokomo resident Jackie Richardson is the mother of two daughters in the Taylor school system.