Dave MacAnally/Eyewitness News
Indianapoils - The state's largest school system may change the way families buy back-to-school clothes. The choices may get a lot simpler as the district tries to hold down costs by requiring uniforms for its 37,000 students.
IPS students wear a rainbow of colors, but some of that clothing variety may fade with school uniforms.
"To have students look the part of the students we know we have. Focused on education, not worried about fitting in dresswise - kids focused on learning and nothing else," said IPS spokeswoman Mary Louis Bewley.
The IPS dress code plan would call for tan or navy or black pants with white or blue shirts. Shorts and skirts would be allowed. Pants must be belted at the waist, and no baggy pants would be allowed. High school students could add school colors to their outfits.
"We will work with families in financial need so their children need not worry that they will not be able to afford the clothes we are asking them to get," said Bewley.
IPS says it is lining up stores to offer lower cost uniform clothes. Some 82 percent of IPS families are below the poverty line.
"I want uniforms," one student told us. She feels they'll make her school downtown look sharper.
"Then we can dress the same and there is no fighting over what's this or what's that, over what we're wearing," said another pro-uniform student.
"But some people don't want uniforms," said another student. "We would all look the same and you wouldn't hardly be able to tell us apart."
But some mothers told us, "Being a single parent sending children to school every year it's more cost effective" to have uniforms."
"Uniforms would be awesome," said another. "Kids wouldn't have to worry about what they are wearing and no arguments in the morning."
Public hearings on the proposal start March 22nd.
IPS - Get more info on the hearings.
