Atherton Rebels Get Civics Lesson in Uniform Fightby Bob Deitel
The Courier-Journal
Aug. 13, 1999"You just can't give up."Kelly Burdick, 16, held his ground both philosophically and physically the other day as he stood in the 90-degree heat outside his school, Atherton Hight, and passed out leaflets urging other students to consider "creatively disobeying" the school's strict new dress code when classes start Tuesday.
It's not that he's a rabble-rouser, said Kelly, an ace student. In fact, he now sees his dress-code activism as a part of his schooling.
"It's very educational. For the first time, I can rally for a political cause," he said.
And so it has become a living, breathing, reality-stoked civics lesson.
Public school is still four days away from starting in Jefferson County, and already much attention has been focused on what kind of hubbub might surround the start of Atherton's new dress code - a code that, among other limits, will force even the most free-spirited souls to wear khaki or black pants or skirts and a small choice of tops built around plain oxford and polo styles.
The prospect of such conformity prompted an activist group of students and parents to spend last school year working to persuade Atherton's ruling decision-making council to stop and reconsider its steady march toward mandatory uniforms.
The cause only intensified when anti-uniform crusaders not only couldn't halt the march but began to feel that their opinions, ideas for alternative solutions to any problems, quest for mediation and pleas about maintaining Atherton's reputation for "individuality" and "diversity" were being dismissed.
"We would make these statements to a brick wall," bemoans Carol Ely, mother of an Atherton sophomore. "We could not get a dialogue going."
The school's principal, Fred Harbison, agrees that the process had flaws - difficulties that weren't helped by the fact that Harbison, a veteran middle-school principal who actually has become well-liked by anti-uniform leaders, was in his first year at Atherton and was still getting to know the key players.
"There's no doubt that I could have done a better job had I been in the position of knowing the people and knowing both sides as we worked through this," Harbison said.
"It's just a difficult time for both sides, really," he said. "It was a controversial situation, and it just didn't please some folks. And I think there are legitimate gripes, if you will, on both sides."
Whatever indignities have been suffered or perceived by either side, a potential showdown of some sort now looms - a prospect heightened Wednesday when a mix of about 130 students and parents attended a pep rally to learn about possible strategies.
And a number of students said that they are learning a lot.
"I'm actually glad this happened, because it gives me a better understanding of civil disobedience," said one young activist-leader, Eli Levine, nearly 16 and a junior.
"Well, he said after reconsidering his zeal, "I'd rather have it be an easier fight, but it does give me more of an understanding of what the civil-rights movement had to go through, and what Gandhi had to do."
Gandhi didn't have the Internet to help, of course. E-mail networks have buzzed all summer with messages keeping a core group of Atherton parents informed and strategizing. An informational website (www.historybox.com/atherton) was created last school year and now contains updates, histories and linkds to national dress-code information. The site has also drawn contact by other dress-code opponents around the nation.
"It is amazing. I don't think the media has captured, really, the depth of it," said one anti-uniform leader, Sheila Tasman, mother of an Atherton sophomore.
Behind it all, however, is real distress, said Tasman, who's even surprised by her own public passion over the issue. "I used to be such a low-profile kind of person. I never made waves," she said.
Her fire, too, goes back to her perceptions of the process, not merely unhappiness with the outcome. That sentiment comes from many of the leaders, young and older.
"I think for a lot of people it's become less about the uniform and more about getting the system to work," said John Schlafer, 17, a senior. "It's an issue of how they've been treated by the school and the way the system has failed them."
The activists still think they made important arguments against mandating uniforms at their school - a school that even promotes the added diversity created by its magnet program, the International Baccalaureate, which attracts students of many nationalities.
If any school-climate or behavioral problems exist, the parent and student anti-uniform leaders say, other solutions should be discussed. They also point at a school opinion survey that, although answered by less than a majority of of families, showed lopsided student and parent sentiment against uniforms.
"The thing that bugs me the most," Kelly Burdick said while handing out leaflets the other day, "is that we worked through every step of the process. We went to (council) meetings. We spoke. They sent out the survey - but nobody listened to us."
Some of the uniform opponents now see the process as a failure of the school-based management council system instituted under Kentucky education reform.
Another lesson might be in human relations and communication.
"I would like the end result of all this coverage to be everybody saying, 'This is ridiculous, let's step back and sit down at the table again and work through this, let's focus on some real priorities,'" said Dale Tucker, the father of an Atherton Student and, yes, an opponent of the new dress code.
"This is not the formula for a happy school year," Tucker said.
Behind the scenes and by e-mail, parents have been brainstorming possible compromises - as well as talking with lawyers about options.
They've also told the school that they now have a cadre of involved, energized parents willing to volunteer to help the school's academic needs too. Ideas have ranged from having parents serve as tutors or mentors to helping students learn how to conduct research and use the Internet.
Harbison, the principal, said the dress code is subject to future study. "I have no doubt that, like any policy put into place, ti will be evaluated, and certainly we wouldn't stay with anything we thought would be counterproductive."
In perhaps a bit of irony, Harbison also has long had his own fashion trademark, suspenders, which aren't on the new list of allowable student clothing.
The bottom line, though, is that "this was something the faculty wanted," Harbison said of the new code. "There's no doubt about that, the majority of the faculty wants it."
On Tuesday, when Atherton's 1,150 or so students arrive, the school's plan is to minimize any turmoil, Harbison said. "Basically these are all good kids. A lot of them are high achievers. We're going to treat them with respect, because we will work through this one way or the other.
"And once we get through this, however it shakes out," he said, "we'll go on about what we should be focusing on. And that is classroom instruction."
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