Next year Mueller Park Junior High may be the first secondary school in the state to adopt school uniforms.
If the uniform policy goes through, it will probably not mandate a strict parochial school-type uniform but a dress code with certain colors for shirts, blouses, pants and skirts, collared shirts, length restrictions on shorts, no baggy clothes and no Levi's or other denim jeans.PTA vice president Jolene Jones said parents whose children had attended uniform-wearing private schools or schools overseas began asking last year about the possibility of uniforms at Mueller Park. The school is in an upscale Bountiful neighborhood.
Jones and PTA president Maria Sanchez did some research, examining Salt Lake's Nibley Park Elementary, which adopted uniforms this year, and California's Long Beach Unified School District, which has adopted uniforms districtwide. They liked what they saw.
"It's not just about drugs and gangs," Jones said. "It's eliminating some of the distractions. You don't even notice they're in uniform - you just notice it's a real clean look."
Last month the PTA called a parents meeting where it got reaction and formed a 30-member community council to explore possible options and make a recommendation. Parents will likely vote on the recommendation in February or March.
"We don't want to cram this down anyone's throat," Jones said. "If the community doesn't want it it won't be brought up again."
Reacting to those who object to uniforms as an overly broad solution to a few isolated problems, uniform proponents are quick to say their objective is broader than that: Mueller Park is already a very good school they would like to generally make even better.
Attendance in grades K-8 at Long Beach, now in its third year of uniforms, is at its highest level in two decades - 99 percent, when excused absences for illness are added in. Crimes such as sexual assault, robbery and chemical substance abuse are down more than 50 percent. Grades and test score data are now being gathered.
The Long Beach uniform policy survived a First Amendment court challenge, and the district settled out of court in another case where the American Civil Liberties Union contended poorer students who couldn't afford uniforms were being discriminated against.
The district agreed to pay for indigent students' uniforms, and Jones said Mueller Park would do the same.
According to state law, if a parent vote is held on whether to adopt school uniforms only that a simple majority need approve it. (If a parent vote is not held, 20 percent of parents can force a vote.) Nevertheless, said David Doty, assistant to the superintendent for policy and school law in Davis, Mueller Park uniform proponents should strive for a very large majority before going forward.
"Unless you have 75 to 80 percent strongly or at least moderately approving of this thing it's probably not worth the headache," he said.
So far, local reaction has largely been favorable. Doty attended the November parents meeting, which he characterized as "overwhelmingly positive."
"They are, I think, approaching this the proper way which is to gather community input first," he said. "I think that's critical to the success of these kinds of initiatives. It's a big change in how a school operates."
The Davis Board of Education and the Mueller Park administration are officially neutral on school uniforms, leaving the decision up to parents and community councils.
Currently Nibley Park Elementary in the Salt Lake School District is the only school in Utah with uniforms.