Nationally, there is a rise in the number of public school districts are requiring their students to wear uniforms or abide by a strict dress code. As more and more public schools start using uniforms, debate over uniform usage, the reasoning behind it, and uniforms' overall effectiveness continues. One public school system, Long Beach Unified School District in California, has lead the way by becoming the first urban school system to require students to wear uniforms (Spatt 52). Uniform supporters including former President Clinton have used the Long Beach system as proof that uniforms work (King 33). These supporters have started a wave of uniform adoption across the nation, which over the past five years has only grown stronger (Wingert 72). The Long Beach system is not without its opponents and as uniforms gain in popularity so does the number of people who oppose them. The American Civil Liberties Union contends that uniforms not only restrict freedom of exp!

ression, but that they are a trivial non-constructive attempts to solve much more serious problems (King 34). Critics of school uniforms and the Long Beach system from all around the country, incl

ate legislature then moved quickly and to enact new measures to protect and promote the use of uniforms. The California legislature inserted several provisions to protect school boards from civil liberties challenges they thought the boards would face. Some provisions included are that school districts must consult with parents, teachers, and principals before adopting a uniform code and that they give parents six months' notice before they enacted any such code. The law makers also made sure to include a provision allowing parents an opportunity to demonstrate to school board members why their children should not have to wear the designated uniform (Spat 53). Since then eleven other states have created policies permitting schools to adopt uniform policies (King 33).

The school district across the nation that switched to a mandatory uniform policy received some of their biggest support and encouragement from then President Bill Clinton. President Clinton visited Long Beach in 1995 and afterwards urged all schools to consider a mandatory school uniforms. He then outlined uniforms' advantages in the Manual on School Uniforms, which the Clinton instructed the Department of Education to distribute to all 16,000 school districts in the country (Wilkins 19). In his 1996 State of The Union Address then president Bill Clinton referred to the worth of school uniforms and used the Long Beach School District as an example (King 32). He is quoted as saying "If it means that teenagers will stop killing each other over designer jackets, then our public schools should be able to require their students to wear uniforms"

As violence in schools becomes more and more of a concern across the country, educators and parents alike are examining every means possible, including school uniforms, to reduce classroom tensions. While some people claim

Some common words found in the essay are:
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