Pottstown's Post-Uniform Dress Code? Not Much

For more than a decade, the school district dress code, or uniform policy, has been a point of contention in the community.

Polls, public meetings have consistently shown about half the people support the idea of uniforms, and the other half do not.

It has been cited as both cause and cure for bullying, a savings for families — and an extra expense for families.

Teachers have complained that they are becoming the uniform police and parents have complained about both too lax and too stringent an enforcement of a policy that was often hard to pin down.

In 2015, while still a student at Pottstown High School, student board member Emanuel Wilkerson convinced the board in a 5-4 vote to suspend the policy at the high school as en experiment.

That experiment lasted until last month, when the suspension became permanent — along with a surprise vote to do away with the uniform/dress code policy for all schools.

This was followed by the tantalizing question: “What comes next?”

The answer, as it turns out, is very little.

Thursday night the school board quietly adopted a new policy crafted from discussions at a policy meeting the week before from which the media fled.

The new one-page three-paragraph policy leaves things very much wide open and much open to interpretation.

It says simply that “each building level (elementary/middle/high) will maintain and enforce a standard of dress among students.”

The standards will be based on three seemingly simple questions:

• “is what the student is wearing disruptive?”

• “would this standard of dress be appropriate in most work environments?”

• “is the student reflecting a version of Pottstown School District that is positive to visitors and community members?”

Other than that, the policy says that specific standards will be included in the student handbook for each building and that the administrators will “assess the compliance rate each year” and make whatever changes they feel are necessary.

Those changes will be announced before the end of school in June.

So you’re on your own folks.

Here are the Tweets from the school board meeting:

  Fighting for Fair School Funding

$62.7M Pottstown Budget To Bring 3.5% Tax Hike

The three-year-long no-tax-hike streak for the Pottstown School District has just about run its course.

At the school board's Facilities/Finance committee meeting Thursday night -- a cacophonous affair if ever I covered one -- the message was pretty simple.

Nothing has changed.

Business Manager Maureen Jampo told the committee members that revenues from the previous year remained flat -- due largely to challenges to property assessments which reduced revenues -- while expenses had gone up due primarily to the increase in teacher salaries and increased pension costs.

Use of reserve funds set aside for the pension hikes covered about $432,000 of the $1.4 million budget gap for the coming year. The other $1 million will be covered by the 3.5 percent tax hike called for in the budget.

(In fact, had Pottstown Hospital not been pulled from the tax rolls as a result of being sold to Tower Health, the school budget would be balanced for the coming year except for $36,000.)

Instread, the need to make up the $1 million shortfall hike will add $98.56 to the annual tax bill for a home assessed at $78,890, the borough median.

School Board member John Armato pointed out that during the previous three years, when no tax hike was imposed, property owners experienced more than $1,600 in savings from the homestead tax break, "much less than the increase they will see this year."

At his prompting, Jampo also agreed with his assessment that the only way to achieve a fourth year with no tax hike would be to "cut a whole lot of programs that people do not want to see cut."

As evidence that the district is doing everything it can to cut costs, Superintendent Stephen Rodriguez said the decision on outsourcing transportation department will become final on June 18, producing an expected savings of $78,000.

But, as Rodriguez said Jampo outlined to him, "one student who needs special transportation will eat that in a few months."

Aramto confirmed that the district has one bus run, for two students, that costs the district $98,000 a year.

Despite the budget constrictions, Rodriguez confirmed that the dean of students, security guard and mental health professional provided in partnership with Creative Health would remain at Pottstown Middle School where bullying and violence problems have recently made headlines.

The school board will meet next week to finalize the budget picture, but given that next week does not leave enough time to publish any changes to the budget, you can rest assured that the tax hike will likely remain at 3.5 percent.

The finance committee also engaged in some brainstorming about coming problems, including the pending collapse of the 40-year-old heating system at the administration building and over-crowding at the middle school.

Rodriguez said the issues on the table "have many moving parts," with each potential solution or change incurring costs and setting off a ripple of secondary effects that have to be considered.

None of the things discussed in the Tweets below, he said, are even close to a decision point and none would be implemented in the coming school year.

The committee then adjourned to allow the policy committee to begin discussions of the dress code that must be implemented in the wake of the board decision to do away with school uniforms.

But you must excuse me, dear reader. Having lived through those first initial discussions when the uniforms were implemented, I did not have the core strength to sit through another.

Rest assured, once the board settles on a new dress code, it will be conveyed to you either here or in the pages of The Mercury. But have mercy and spare me the reporting of yet another discussion of what students should wear to school.

So with that, here are the Tweets from last night's meeting:

Show Me the Money

No Uniform Opinion on Pottstown School Uniforms

Twenty-eight people spoke on the subject of Pottstown School District's school uniform policy (or dress code) during Monday night's special meeting of the school board policy committee.

Of them, 17 spoke against them, 11 in favor and one whose opinion was hard to pin down.

Objections raised included the cost, the failure of uniforms to cut down on bullying and bad behavior, especially at the middle school, a reduction of school spirit and the suppression of individual expression.

Support argued that in fact uniforms are cheaper, make mornings easier and do reduce bullying, increase school and community spirit and make Pottstown students stand out from others.

Among the more notable opponents was Pottstown High School Principal Danielle McCoy who told the committee that school spirit (among the staff as well as the students) went up and discipline problems went down when uniforms were eliminated two years ago and that school was allowed to implement a dress code.

"We became the uniform police," McCoy said of the staff. "And how am I supposed to send a student home because he can't learn as well in a pink shirt as he can in a blue one?" she said.

By contrast, some of the parents said since the uniform requirement was lifted at the high school, student dress has become more lurid and that the policy is not implemented evenly.

Others asked for proof that the uniforms did what they were supposed to do, improve discipline.

School Board Vice President Emanuel Wilkerson, who championed the lifting of the uniform policy at the high school, said the policy committee has received data on that subject and it will be posted on the district web site shortly.

In the meantime, it seems, the discussion will go on because, as Superintendent Stephen Rodriguez noted at the start of the meeting, whatever change is made, if any, it will NOT be implemented in the 2017-2018 school year which begins next month.

The discussion was broadcast live in a Facebook video feed, which you can watch by clicking here.

If you still like to read your live coverage, here are the Tweets from the meeting.

Suspension of PHS Uniform Policy Extended

Mercury File Photo

Are school uniforms a thing of the past at Pottstown High School? Sort of.

I won't beat around the bush, I know why you're all here.

Although the school board left it to the very last item, I won't.

Yes, the school board voted 5-4 Monday night to continue its suspension of the uniform policy at Pottstown High School at least until the end of the year.

Unlike the discussion last week, in which board members assumed the vote would be to life the uniform requirements permanently, a motion to "suspend" the policy further magically appeared on Monday's agenda.

Board members Amy Francis, Andrew Kefer, Mary-Beth Bacallao and Board President Judyth Zahora constituted the nay votes.

As board member Tom Hylton explained, with the motion "we're suspending, not ending" the uniform policy.

He said with a new principal coming into the high school, (Danielle McCoy was unanimously hired Monday night); and new board members, it makes sense to continue to examine the results of the suspension before making a final decision.

Board member Amy Francis, who was integral to the adoption of the policy in the first place, said she was at least pleased to see more data would be collected and a decision put off.

Also on Monday night's agenda, a $57 million budget which does not raise taxes was unanimously approved.

And apparently some of the pre-publicity about the raises approved last night put at least one of them off-track, with the board tabling a $10,000 raise for transportation supervisor Lisa Schade.

Not put off was a new 3-year contract for Business Manager Linda Adams. The details of that contract were missing from the district web site until just before the vote.

And although the agenda listed every last paltry stipend for every staffer who will help produce "The Wiz" next year at the high school, Adams's salary and details had to be hunted down.

For those willing to troll down to page 189 of the board exhibits (I am not making that number up), the details are now laid out, and also now final.

It includes a salary for the coming year of $138,119 plus annual raises in the coming years matched to the increase of the Philadelphia-area consumer price index, plus a half-percent.

Perhaps more significant than the salary increases is the $15,000 we taxpayers will contribute every year to her retirement fund, as well as 30 vacations days a year.

Of equal (or perhaps greater) note to taxpayers was the appearance of Beth Yoder, art teacher and president of the Pottstown Federation of Teachers.

She told the board that the announcement of a 0 tax increase budget was a "slap in the face" to the teachers and an indication that reaching an agreement with the union, who contract ends in eight weeks, "is not a priority."

She said with the increase in health care costs and the absence of significant percentage raises., near 25 percent of the district's teachers, including those who have helped make Pottstown High School the second-best performing urban high school in the state are taking home less money than they were several years ago.

The teaching staff is depressed and demoralized by the fact that administrators get automatic annual increases and benefits that they do not, and will find it increasingly difficult to find motivation to do their best for Pottstown students under these circumstances.

"It's getting harder to work as hard as our children deserve," she said.
Without further ado, here are the Tweets from Monday night's meeting.

A Non-Uniform Meeting

The students of Pottstown High School will be pleased to kn ow that the school board seems inclined to give them a chance to prove the school does not need a uniform policy.

Well at least those of you who don't already follow me on Twitter (hint, hint) ... because those lucky few know already.

The trial period, if adopted Monday, will go until the end of the year, and Superintendent Jeff Sparagana said the distirct will do a "three-year look-back" to see how compliance and discipline issues compare for the same period with, and without the uniform policy being in place.

Emmanuel Wilkerson, the student member of the board who presented the idea to the board and has guided it to this point, expressed confidence in the student body's ability to demonstrate that they can responsible dress those bodies.

Also worthy of note was a presentation by Borough Manager Mark Flanders and PAID Executive Director Steve Bamford on the idea of establishing one or several LERTA districts in town as a way to spur economic development.

And whether or not the district has enough money to both replace the flat roof on the administration building, and undertake other roof and masonry repairs at other buildings was a subject of much discussion and will await a vote on Monday night.

Here are the many, many, many Tweets from the meeting.

A Uniformly Good Idea

A local Pottstown Girl Scout Troop  is collecting new or used clothing that can be used as student uniforms in the Pottstown School District.

Suggested donations are white, light blue, or navy polo shirts, turtlenecks, certain sweaters and sweatshirts and navy blue or khaki pants, shorts, skirts, or skorts. 

All sizes are needed. 

The Girl Scouts have drop off sites at Grumpy's Sandwich Shop, Rich Ranieri's MAB paints -- both of which are on High St -- Mike's Brick Oven pizza on Charlotte St., the YMCA, Pottstown School District Administration  Building  230 Beech St. and the North End Swim Club.

All uniforms will be donated to the Pottstown Cluster of Religious Communities. 

Victoria Bumstead, volunteer coordinator for the cluster, has indicated that many clients of the center are in need of uniforms before the start of the school year. 

For more information about the uniforms, click here.

            

            

The Shirt Makes the Man (Or Woman)

Photo courtesy of John Armato

Pottstown Schools are known for many things and one of them is a pretty strict uniform policy.

I will confess that I opposed this when it was proposed, hippie relic that I am, but once it was implemented I have grown fond of it.

As might be expected, it has raised a few eyebrows and problems over the years, not the least of which was the infamous "Ugg boots" controversy which, to be told, had little to do with the policy and a lot to do with middle school kids being stupid.

As the parent of a middle school kids, all I can say is "go figure."

Anyhoo.

A bunch of folks in the district had a good idea, to sell T-shirts which allow Pottstown residents to proudly proclaim they are from Pottstown.

On the front are the words "We Are Pottstown."

On the back, well look at the picture and see for yourself.

And no where would such shirts be better worn than in the schools.

Now I know where you think I'm going with this, but you're wrong.

Although technically such shirts would be a violation of the Pottstown Uniform Policy if worn in school, the Pottstown School Board has wisely chosen to make an exception.

At a recent meeting they discussed the matter and had no objection to these shirts being worn in school.

I should hope not.

Below is the order form so you can get one for yourself and one for your favorite Pottstownian for Christmas.