Tired of school uniforms, more than 1,500 Clayton County high school students came to school on Friday in what school officials called "non-appropriate dress."
Now the students are facing suspensions, detentions and other punishments.
After questions from the AJC, school officials confirmed on Tuesday that the district was the “target” of an organized protest.
“Based on an incomplete survey of schools, the district has determined that more than 1,500 students arrived at school on Friday in non-appropriate dress,” district spokesman Charles White said in a statement.
White declined to say how many students were suspended, but said they were all disciplined. White said that discipline varied from school to school. He said he could not comment on specifics because schools are closed all week for Thanksgiving.
“In several cases, this was in direct defiance of school-level administrative instructions to students advising them to be in uniform dress or face consequence for their actions,” he said in a statement.
The students at the county’s nine high schools organized online by sending messages urging their friends to “buck the system,” White said.
The uniform boycott, called "Protest As One," was also discussed among 782 members of a public Facebook group called "Clayton County high school students against required uniforms."
One student organizer wrote, "they can't suspend you all and you will be making a stand for yourself."
But the students learned otherwise.
“Students who participated in this deliberate attempt to interrupt the school routine made a bad choice on Friday and need to be held responsible for that decision,” Superintendent Edmond Heatley said in a statement. “It should be noted that disciplinary actions were based on students’ failure to follow instructions and disrupting the school and not on being out of uniform dress.”
Last school year, Clayton ordered all elementary and middle school students to wear uniform dress, including khaki pants, skirts, polo shirts and sweaters of the same color. This year, the policy spread to the district’s nine high schools.
The policy prohibits jeans, T-shirts, flip-flops and hats.
School board chairwoman Alieka Anderson said she supports the punishments because the students violated a district policy.
“It’s a board-mandated policy,” she said Tuesday night. “It’s about student achievement and not what you wear.”
More than 100 students were suspended two days after they showed up at Drew High School in Riverdale not in uniforms. They were suspended on Nov. 20 and Nov. 30, according to a message sent to parents.
Sammy Heath said his daughter, a Drew student, wasn't one of the suspended students, but he understands why the kids are reluctant to comply with the policy.
"I wasn’t down with that when they put that up for the vote, but we lost," he said. "I had to buy them so she wouldn’t get in trouble."
Heath said not only does his daughter not want to wear the uniforms, he struggles to afford them.
"Now I have to buy uniform clothes and regular clothes. I don’t have money like that," Heath said. "I’m a single father and pay child support to two other kids. I don’t have it like that."
But other parents said the uniforms have helped keep the teenagers focused on academics and less on each other.
"I think it helps them to focus much better," said Yolanda Williams, who has a student at Drew and another at a Clayton elementary school. "You have a lot of kids who are geared toward fashion as opposed to learning. That [uniforms] helps a whole lot, but only if we can get all the parents to participate. Some parents don’t want their kids to participate."
More than 1,700 parents and students signed an online petition to the Clayton school board, calling the uniforms "tyranny and oppression of adults."
The district has about 49,000 students and is the fifth largest school system in Georgia.
About the Author
