New Castle School District Uniform Policy

For my journalism class, I had to request a document that would fall under the guidelines of the state's "right to know" laws. I decided to the town of New Castle, Pa. for my information because of the fact that I live there when I am not on campus. I wanted to go back to a policy that was put in place by the New Castle School District back when I was high school student there for the 2004 and 2005 school year. This topic stirred a lot of controversy and divided the town right in half.

That policy was the policy to stricten the dress code into what many critics would call a "uniform policy." To briefly provide background on the uniform policy of the New Castle School District, it was a policy that made you wear clothes that looked approperiate for school. The pants had to be black or gray and the shirts had to be white, gray, red, or black. The clothes started out being in the form of dress clothes until there were threats of lawsuits by different students at the school because they said it violated their right to express themselves freely. The district then decided to allow black jeans to be worn as well. But the policy to this day remains strict.

With the controversy the uniform policy brought, I thought I would request the information on the vote by each school board member on the uniforms. I sent a letter on October 24 with the help of my journalism professor, Michele McCoy to the superintendent, George Gabriel, on this vote. A week later, I got the information I wanted back with a letter from the superintendent acknowledging they received my request.

Everything I wanted was there. The result ended up being that eight of the nine school board members approved the new dress code. Only one didn't approve. For the record, that person ended up being the member I ended up interviewing for another English project back at high school. Her name was Andrea Przybylski for the record. Andrea claimed she needed more information on the dress code about the funding.

I must admit that I was surprised by how on top of things the New Castle School District was when it came to the "right to know" law. It was said Pennsylvania was 48th out of 50 when it came to transparency of the law. I thought I would have a really hard time with the district because of the fact the rest of the state is poor on the "right to know" law. But the district made the state look better than 48th. I commend the district for its terrific reply to my request. I thank the office of the superintendent and the superintendent himself for providing me the information I needed to know. New Castle knows more about the right to know law than most of the state does, if the state is indeed 48th out of 50.