About half the students in Heidy Rosales’ second-grade class wear the school uniform. They are not mandatory.

The Providence Journal / Mary Murphy

PROVIDENCE — As educators cast about for ways to boost student achievement and make classrooms safer, school uniforms, those itchy parochial school relics, may be making a comeback.

In the decade since President Bill Clinton extolled the idea of uniforms in his annual State of the Union address, the hallmark dress of private and Catholic education has cropped up in an unlikely place: public schools.

Uniform enthusiasts say formal dress can contribute to everything from curbing gang-related activity to reducing competition among students. In tough economic times they save parents big money.

More than half the Providence elementary schools now have voluntary uniform programs, while several charter schools have strict requirements.

Now Woonsocket officials want to create dress guidelines, taking their request to the General Assembly this session to ensure that they’re authorized to do so.

The response from lawmakers so far has been positive. A few have even proposed expanding the proposal to all Rhode Island districts.

“I think we should make it statewide,” said Providence Rep. Anastasia Williams. “It’s past due and it works.”

To the students at Alfred Lima Elementary School in South Providence, uniforms are as much a part of the academic day as pencils and recess.

Inside the school’s art room last week, principal Jose Valerio surveyed the second-graders who worked around tables, a mini-battalion of blue pants and white shirts.

“It becomes one less issue,” he said. “We have so many other distractions and challenges. Not worrying about this is nice.”

Valerio says his teachers are no longer anxious that childrens’ color choices might signal involvement with a gang, or that clothing fosters rivalries among youngsters.

“Can I say because of the uniforms all of a sudden we have better discipline here? No. But it really is one less thing to worry about,” he said.

To call the ensembles uniforms might be a stretch. Each student is asked to wear navy-blue pants and a white shirt, preferably with a sewn-on school emblem. But the school doesn’t require parents to purchase the clothing through a set vender, leaving room for interpretation.

And because the program is voluntary, Providence principals are left with few tools to prod students who don’t participate. So over the years, Valerio has gotten creative, sometimes awarding points to classes with high participation.

Some Providence schools work with local stores securing discounts that keep costs low, said the Providence schools’ elementary education director, Gary Moroch. Others encourage parents to donate outgrown clothing to those who can’t afford it.

But compared with the alternative, Moroch estimates that dress codes are actually more cost effective.

Woonsocket officials cite all that as the reason they want to implement clothing specifications in their district and why it might be worth it elsewhere too.

Cumberland Rep. Karen MacBeth, who is a school principal in Woonsocket, praised the proposal at a recent meeting of the House Municipal Government Committee. MacBeth said she’s watched her own children benefit from wearing uniforms. “It is very cost effective to put a child in a pair of pants and a shirt. You only need two of each,” she said. Uniforms also eliminate the stresses of trying to compete with classmates in pricier togs.

But the Rhode Island Affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union and the House committee chairman, Raymond E. Gallison, Jr., D-Bristol, say they have concerns about the Woonsocket proposal.

For starters, though the bill’s language asks authority to create a dress code, Woonsocket officials have testified that they’re considering requiring uniforms.

The ACLU says it has no problem with a voluntary program like the one in Providence, but objects to mandating uniforms. Its executive director, Steven Brown, cites a ruling by the state’s education commissioner noting that districts can only mandate uniforms if not doing so “presents a clear and present danger to the students’ health and safety…”

(A spokesman for the Education Department said it does not take a position on uniforms, nor keep track of how many schools have them.)

Woonsocket officials now say it’s not their intention to force any policy upon students.

But there’s another reasons the ACLU opposes school uniforms. Brown points to a 1998 study by the Journal of Education Research that concluded required dress does not help curb behavioral problems or violence.

But The Tennessean newspaper, in Nashville, reported last fall that students brought fewer guns, knives and drugs to school during their first year wearing uniforms.

Woonsocket officials say even anecdotal evidence like that is enough to make a dress code worth a try for a few years.

“We need a little bit of control in our schools and maybe that comes in a small amount of control over the clothes they wear,” said Rep. Lisa Baldelli-Hunt, a Woonsocket Democrat.

cneedham@projo.com