CLEVELAND — High school students won't have to fuss about what to wear to class next year. Their choices just shrank.
Effective in August, they must don the uniform approved unanimously Tuesday night by the school board. Options are limited to collared shirts or blouses, dress slacks or skirts, and knee-length shorts or jumpers -- all in a select set of conservative colors.
The uniforms are the same as those mandated in the city's elementary schools for the last two years. A few high schools also have adopted uniforms, but most follow a looser dress code that simply prohibits items such as hoodies, jeans, long white T-shirts and shirts with writing on them.
Clothes make the student, board Chairman Robert Heard told his colleagues before the vote.
"It is my belief that appropriate student dress can have a positive influence on behavior," he said.
Officials say requiring uniforms keeps students from dressing in gang clothes and colors. It also spares children from ridicule when they can't afford to go in style.
The district tabulated the price of outfitting a teen in brands like Rocawear and Air Force One. The cost of cool was $295, while the uniform rang up at less than $56, mostly for shoes.
School officials took surveys before acting. Students, not surprisingly, voiced strong disapproval; parents and teachers were solid supporters.
Bryce Williams, a 10th-grader at Carl F. Shuler High School, said uniforms limit self-expression and make students feel like little kids.
He predicted that peers will defy the edict, even at the risk of suspension. Williams said the more lenient dress code the school has now is adequate.
"Everyone's following it just fine," he said Tuesday in an interview.
Meryl Johnson, who teaches at John F. Kennedy High School, encouraged the board to think twice. Teachers will end up serving as fashion police, and constant enforcement will steal time from instruction, she said.
Some school board members had fretted that parents coping with poverty would be hard-pressed to pay for new clothes, even at a bargain.
When the elementary schools went to uniforms two years ago, the county donated $1 million for vouchers given to families with incomes of up to twice the federal poverty level.
Each $75 voucher bought four shirts or blouses, three pairs of slacks or skirts, and a belt from Silverman's Discount Department Stores. The donation clothed 17,331 children, about half the elementary school enrollment.
When no contributors stepped up last year, the school district spent $580,000 to buy uniforms. More than 12,000 children received $48 vouchers, good for two tops, two bottoms and a belt.
The district has no money to help next year, Chief Executive Officer Eugene Sanders said. Officials promised to help families obtain clothing through churches, social-service agencies and other sources.
Morgan Services supplies rental work uniforms. Two years ago, Cleveland branch General Manager Larry Cooper bought 1,500 dress-code shirts at a discount and donated them to needy students at Lincoln-West High School, where his wife teaches.
A dress code satisfies Cooper, who acknowledges that school uniforms can be "stifling." But he said schools need one or the other.
"They create an atmosphere," he said. "It just gets away from the baggy pants and big T-shirts."