During recess at Philadelphia’s Kearny Elementary School, kids swirl in light blue and navy, the colors of their uniforms.
The teachers blend right in. They wear the uniforms too.
Even as many districts across the country drop student uniform requirements amid low compliance, teachers at scattered public schools are giving a boost to appointed apparel.
“Wearing a school uniform identifies me with the school, makes me a part of this community,” said Anthony Lapin, a 3rd-grade teacher at Kearny, which is surrounded by low-income housing complexes.
“In the neighborhood, people who see me know I’m a teacher at this school.”
It’s difficult to gauge how many teachers dress in uniforms because apparently no national organization tracks the practice. And it hasn’t met with 100 percent approval where it has been tried.
Nonetheless, advocates say teacher uniforms bolster school spirit and unity and help enforce student dress codes.
“I teach music, and we sit on the floor, play instruments, dance,” said Donna Metler of Lester Elementary School in Memphis. “If I do this dressed in the same way the kids are, the girls can’t complain that they can’t sit on the floor in a knee-length skirt, because I do.”
Mandating a look
Public schools that require student uniforms generally mandate certain colors and dress specifications, rather than a particular clothing brand or fabric pattern.
Memphis students, for example, can wear any all-white shirt, as long as it has a collar and sleeves, and black, khaki or navy skirts, jumpers, knee-length shorts or pants of various styles: boot-cut, straight-legged, cargo, capri, cropped.
Memphis students started wearing uniforms in August. Wanda Halbert, a school board member, said the board could not extend the policy to teachers because of union contracts. But Halbert encourages teachers to adopt the attire, setting an example herself.
The Memphis Education Association is surveying members on the question, said Lola Bolden, the union’s president. “There are a few that say, `No, I want to dress how I want to dress,'” Bolden said.
It’s a feeling shared elsewhere.
“I didn’t wear blue plaid as a student, and I don’t intend to begin now,” said San Francisco’s Barbara Llorente, who joined Hillcrest Elementary School colleagues over the summer in voting down a teacher uniform proposal.
Llorente, who teaches 1st and 2nd grades, said she wants to be treated as a professional, trusted to choose appropriate work clothes.
Greg Gentry encountered similar resistance from a few teachers at Tabor Middle School in Warner Robins, Ga., when he suggested as principal that they wear uniforms in the 2000-01 school year.
He said the concerns of that small group–three teachers of almost 50–contributed to his scrapping the idea.
“They felt like it took away freedom of separation” between teachers and students, said Gentry, who now oversees his district’s educational computer software and technology. “Teachers can chew gum [in school], and students can’t. That’s just life.”
Ask students what they think about teachers in uniforms, and the responses are just as varied.
“If the students [have] got to wear uniforms, that doesn’t mean the teachers have to wear them,” said 3rd grader Cortenay Richards at Philadelphia’s Kearny. “It’s their choice, what they want to wear.”
Raymond Bordley, a Kearny 4th grader, countered: “I think they set a good example if teachers wear a uniform.”
Josephine Jackson, a 5th-grade teacher at West St. John Elementary, a public school in Edgard, La., said that putting on a uniform shows her students that she belongs to the same circle as them.
Plus, Jackson said, the standard attire is practical: “It’s so much easier waking up in the morning and knowing exactly what you’re going to put on.”
Ed McHugh, music teacher at Kearny, concurs. His school outfit lets him dress professionally without compromising his pricier clothes.
“You get dirty. You get chalk on your clothes,” he said. “You’re not going to wear your Christian Dior.”
Rhonda Thomas, manager of Oklahoma City-based School Avenue, which sells teacher uniforms, said the adult outfits are machine-washable and generally cost $40 to $50, depending on style.
Matching students’ attire
But not all uniform distributors carry teacher garments. So teachers often try to match the students’ dress with clothes from retail stores, for about the same price or less.
Teachers at Kearny have worn uniforms since 1996, four years before the Philadelphia school district made them compulsory for students. Principal Eileen Spagnola said she started the uniform program to nourish pride in the school, whose students come from mostly poor families.
Spagnola–who often gets stopped for hugs from students in the school hallways–said she wanted the children to take learning seriously. Because she wasn’t able legally to force them to wear the prescribed wardrobe, she gave them incentives. Homerooms with all the students in uniform would get popcorn parties and their pictures taken for a special bulletin board.
That first year, Spagnola and many of Kearny’s teachers donned the uniform, a move she believes helped persuade students to follow.
“We felt we had to be the role models,” Spagnola said. “If [adults] wore it, that would let the children know that was the rule for the school.”
