The families of students attending Glades Middle School in Miramar will be asked to approve a new uniform policy that limits children’s attire to polo shirts and pants.
The school has not required uniforms since it opened three years ago at a temporary site, a cluster of portable classrooms at Pines Boulevard and Southwest 172nd Avenue in Pembroke Pines. The permanent home, across from Everglades High in west Miramar, is slated to open when the new school year begins in August.
“We thought this would be the best time to do it since we’re moving into a new building,” said Isabel Molina, president of the Glades Parent Teacher Student Association.
The school administration and PTSA leaders are pushing the plan as a way to distinguish Glades Middle School students from older peers at Everglades High. Two-thirds of parents and guardians of children at a school must vote in favor of uniforms for the policy to take effect.
Uniforms, actually “unified dress codes” that limit colors and clothing, are popular in Broward County elementary and middle schools. Parents have approved them in almost 90 percent of elementary schools and two-thirds of middle schools. Uniforms have not been approved at any high schools, where students control the vote.
Mercedes Santana-Woodall, mother of a seventh-grader at Glades, said uniforms are necessary for staff to tell which teenagers are supposed to be on the Glades campus and which are visitors.
“You have some 13- and 14-year-old girls who look like they’re 16, and the same thing for boys,” Santana-Woodall said.
Three years ago Glades parents declined a uniform policy, said Principal Krista Herrera. This time around, the biggest challenge will be persuading enough parents to return the ballots, Herrera said.
Ballots will be collected through the first week of May, and the school will announce the results by the middle of the month.
About 1,700 students attend Glades Middle School.
Under the proposed change at Glades, students must wear two- to three-button polo shirts in hunter green, navy blue, black or white. They will be allowed to wear jeans and any color pants as long as they are regular fit.
Parents and principals who favor uniforms say it eliminates status feuds over expensive apparel and reduces discipline troubles for dress code violations. Other parents and students say uniforms stifle freedom of speech.
Students at three other Broward County middle schools near high school campuses follow a unified dress code. Those schools include Falcon Cove Middle in Weston, adjacent to Cypress Bay High; Nova Middle in Davie, which shares a campus with Nova High; and Plantation Middle, located a half-mile from Plantation High.
Douane D. James can be reached at or 954-385-7930.
