HUNTSVILLE, AL—
What do you think about the idea of school uniforms in Huntsville? If you have a child in a Huntsville city school, you're going to get two phone calls -- one tonight and one Thursday evening. The school system is surveying parents to see if they should enact a system-wide school uniform policy.Parents and guardians of Huntsville school students will get the first call this evening through ParentLink, the school system's automated phone update.
"Basically, the call tonight is to let them know that a parent phone call survey will be done tomorrow night to ask them their opinion on whether or not they would favor school uniforms," said Keith Ward, spokesperson for Huntsville City Schools.
The information that is collected will be given to a uniform committee that formed last spring. That group will look at the input from parents and perhaps make a recommendation to the school board.
"That [second] call will come between 7 and 8:30 Thursday night and we certainly want them to cast their vote and give their opinion on that," said Ward.
If for some reason you miss the call, you'll be able to go to your child's school and ask to cast your ballot there.
If parents tell the committee they like idea and then the board decides to adopt a school uniform policy, it probably wouldn't go into effect until next year.
"The committee will certainly take all this and present it to the board as a whole," explained Ward. "Then, the board would have to implement that and of course this is just conjecture, is that it would probably have to wait until the next full school year cycle to get this up and running and fully implemented."
Four Huntsville City Schools have already adopted an independent school uniform policy, and Ward says parents love it. Those schools are the Academy for Science and Foreign Language, Montview Elementary, Williams Middle and Chapman Middle.
