Students at the Red Bank Charter School wear uniforms, and not just once a century.

The notion of requiring students at Red Bank’s primary and middle schools is under consideration by the school board, today’s Asbury Park Press reports.

After a brief discussion at Tuesday’s meeting, the board decided to send the idea to its community relations committee — again.

“This comes up periodically and we refer it to the community relations committee and it says they’ll question the PTO (parent-teacher organization) on it and it never goes further than that,” said Rosemarie Kopka, veteran board member. “Again, I’d like to refer it to the community relations committee and to the PTO.”

More:

Board vice president Juanita Lewis, who is also chairwoman of the community relations committee, said they’ll look at the issue.

Several members said parents talked to them about uniforms.

“I had some comments from parents on school uniforms, they like them,” said board member Ben Forest.

Board president Peter Noble said he’s also been approached by parents about the uniform issue.

Board member Marjorie Lowe said she lived in St. Thomas for 40 years, where schools on four of the islands had their own separate uniforms.

“You knew who went to what school,” Lowe said.

But she questioned whether uniforms would make a difference here.

“It’s great and you can talk about it for a long time, but it won’t prove anything,” she
said. “I don’t think that I’d want to be the one to enforce it here.”

While Noble said he understood that Red Bank Regional High School was investigating uniforms, officials said that’s not the case.

“We have not had any serious consideration of uniforms at this point,” said Edward
Westervelt, Red Bank Regional superintendent of schools. “We’ve had conversations about it in years past, but it has not been a serious initiative.”

Email this story