School Will Require Student Uniforms : Education: Elementary in Pacoima will be the first LAUSD campus to move from a voluntary to a mandatory policy.

Vaughn Street Elementary School in Pacoima, the first in the Los Angeles Unified School District to adopt a voluntary uniform policy, will become the first to make it mandatory--as dismayed parents and officials have concluded that the optional plan simply does not work.

The reason is fairly obvious: Kids think uniforms “look squarey,” as Vaughn Street fifth-grader David Macias put it.

Other adjectives used by classmates who have similarly eschewed the gray-and-burgundy outfits included “yucky” and “ugly.” Uniformed youngsters, on the other hand, preferred words like “pretty,” “comfortable” and “neat.”

But that difference of opinion will soon be moot because Vaughn Street parents, who continue to fear that gang-style attire could prompt acts of violence, have voted overwhelmingly to require all youngsters to wear uniforms. Fewer than 40% of Vaughn’s 1,150 pupils now wear them, school officials said.

Parents were able to set the new policy, which will take effect in July, because the campus is among the district’s experimental charter schools where parents and officials collaborate in setting their own agenda. (In fact, the school has renamed itself the Vaughn Next Century Learning Center.)

Last year, similar concerns about gang violence prompted the Long Beach Unified School District to become the first urban public school system in the nation to adopt a mandatory uniform policy. Other schools are expected to follow suit as more and more frustrated administrators and parents concede that, when given a choice, children will wear anything but a uniform.

“If 100% of the kids are not wearing uniforms, then the whole idea quickly becomes uncool,” said Rochelle Neal, principal of La Mesa Junior High School in the Santa Clarita Valley.

Uniforms were made mandatory when La Mesa opened in September, thus making it the first school in the north county to require uniforms. The policy has also made the school a popular choice in a district with open enrollment. With an expected capacity enrollment of 1,020 in the fall, La Mesa already has a waiting list of 130 seventh- and eighth-graders whose parents apparently approve of the uniform requirement.

“I firmly believe voluntary programs do not work,” Neal said. “The kids that you want most to wear a uniform--the gangbangers, the ones with not a lot of parental control at home and who cause the most trouble at school--will not wear them.”

The alternatives at La Mesa are simple: If you won’t wear the school’s black-and-teal colors, you can go to one of three other junior highs in the William S. Hart Union High School District--although two of those also are considering mandatory uniform rules.

Once the hallmark of exclusive private and parochial schools, uniforms have become a national trend at public schools in the ‘90s, largely as an antidote to the spread of gangs, whose baggy pants and adopted colors are often viewed as invitations to violence.

More than 200 schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District, or nearly a third of the total, now have voluntary uniform policies. Those campuses include about 30 in the central and eastern areas of the Valley.

Until now, most public schools across the nation have adopted voluntary standards, largely to offset legal challenges that questioned the constitutionality of mandated rules. But school officials say they have to promote uniforms constantly by conducting contests and urging parents to participate. El Dorado Elementary School in Sylmar, for instance, recently put on a uniform fashion show during a parent open house.

The California Education Code, as amended last year, permits individual schools and districts to mandate uniforms as long as parents are allowed to either transfer their children to a school where uniforms are not required or sign a paper exempting their children from the rule. In the Long Beach district, fewer than 1% of parents have exercised the waiver, and many of them have later changed their minds, officials said.

The law previously allowed schools to ban students from wearing gang-related colors and accessories like bandannas, caps and jackets with the logos of such sports teams as the Los Angeles Raiders.

But many parents and administrators felt that even more control over student attire was needed because of growing competition among elementary-age children and preteens to wear expensive brand-name clothing and shoes.

Parents complained that the cost of clothes had taken over as the criterion of a child’s acceptance or rejection at school. Around the country, there were highly publicized incidents of children being killed by other children for their clothing, including at least three such slayings in Baltimore.

School officials say they know of no clothes-related violence at Vaughn Street Elementary or other Valley campuses, although parents have complained about their children being hassled by classmates over color choice. Nonetheless, the significance of gang-style clothing and gangs’ preferred colors in Los Angeles was chronicled in the 1988 film “Colors.”

While the custom of wearing uniforms at public schools is nothing new--middy blouses were the norm for girls through the 1930s--many schools, particularly on the East Coast, began turning to uniforms in the late 1980s as a stabilizer in the clothes competition.

Educators also credit uniforms with bolstering school spirit and promoting better behavior, although opponents argue there is no sound evidence that uniforms prevent gang violence.

On the West Coast, the idea is particularly popular among Latino families and immigrants accustomed to children wearing school uniforms in Central and South America, Europe and Asia.

The legislation that amended the California Education Code was authored by former GOP state Sen. Phil Wyman, a Kern County rancher who said he was inspired by a high school student’s petition drive in 1993 calling for uniforms. The measure was signed last August by Gov. Pete Wilson.

The student, Jesse Atondo, now an 18-year-old senior and student body president at Arvin High School in a farming suburb of Bakersfield, said he was alarmed by the gang-style attire worn by his two younger sisters. The son of farm laborers, Atondo sat outside a supermarket in the town of Lamont every day for two weeks collecting the signatures of 350 parents.

“I told my mom, ‘My sisters are getting into trouble. You’ve got to tell them what to wear,’ ” Atondo said.

He said his informal survey of parents found many felt powerless to set individual standards without some written rules. Atondo’s efforts, backed by most of the community, resulted in a voluntary uniform policy adopted last year by the Lamont school district, which is 95% Latino.

Now, Atondo said, he is pushing for a mandatory uniform policy. The voluntary program “was a very good idea at the beginning,” he said, “but it is falling apart.”

John Chavez, Lamont district superintendent, said that even though only 20% of the students still wear the blue-and-white uniforms, the district policy has eliminated gang-style clothing.

“We no longer have the extremes of the baggy pants, long shirts and bandannas. I feel our dress code did away with the problems,” he said. “Uniforms were a bonus.”

In Long Beach, school officials consider their mandatory uniform policy a success so far. Administrators say they have seen an improvement in grades, attendance and discipline since uniforms were required.

“There are pretty strong indications here that uniforms have been beneficial in elevating the standards of educational excellence,” said Dick Van Der Laan, a district spokesman. “They are certainly not a panacea that will solve every problem, but they have had a positive impact.”

At Vaughn Street Elementary, where most students come from low-income families, parents are already organizing a sale of used and homemade uniforms for those who cannot afford to buy them new.

Proponents expect the mandatory policy to address a phenomenon they began noticing early on with the voluntary approach: Younger children enjoyed wearing the uniforms because they made them feel part of the school, but abandoned their use as they grew older because the clothing was not popular with independent-minded preteens.

Santa Clarita’s La Mesa Junior High moved quickly to avoid a similar problem by immediately requiring uniforms. Administrators there now claim the same academic and behavioral benefits as those in Long Beach.

“We hope we never have to go back the other way,” Neal said. “Once a month, we have a free-dress day, which we totally dread. Uniforms definitely make a difference in the way students behave.”