BY JOSEPH B. NADEAU

WOONSOCKET — The school committee is moving forward on its plan to bring school uniforms to local public schools despite the mix up last spring with state enabling legislation allowing such a move.

School Committee Chairman Marc A. Dubois last week named 10 city parents to an 18-member advisory panel that will be studying implementation of the dress requirement over the winter.
The panel will also include two members of the School Committee, Michelle Williams and Linda Majewski, two teachers, and student representatives from both the middle school and high school, Dubois said.
Dubois wants to have all the “ground work” completed on the change so the school department could notify parents as a soon as possible that it will be enacted within the district.
If the General Assembly were to complete work on the enabling legislation allowing the new policy shortly after returning to session in January, Dubois said he would like to see the district move immediately to adopted it for the coming school year.
“I’m anticipating it would be implemented at the start of school next year,” he said. The subcommittee will have to complete a recommendation on what kind of uniform it would like to see in local schools before the school committee can consider how to make that uniform available.
One option would be for parents to buy the clothing on the retail market and another for the district to make the uniforms available through a bulk purchase from a clothing vendor, he said.
 Before that happens, however, the district will have to complete the legislative process authorizing the clothing requirement.
  The committee agreed to support the concept back in February as a way to end the wearing of inappropriate, gang-styled, or disrespectful clothing in local schools, but did so on the belief the General Assembly had approved needed enabling legislation. The state bill would have made Woonsocket the first public school district in the state to require uniforms at all of its schools.
  But after voting to support the new policy, the committee learned the enabling legislation had passed only the Senate during the past session. The House did not take that step before the past session ended, the panel learned.
 Senator Roger Picard introduced the bill last year while still the area’s District 51 representative and then pursued its passage in the Senate after being elected to the late Sen. Roger Badeau’s seat in a special election. Picard had been under the impression the bill found final passage in the House and only later learned it remained in committee when the session ended.
  Local representatives Jon Brien and Lisa Baldelli-Hunt have voiced support for House passage of the bill, and the final authorization may only be a technical step easily addressed once the body returns to session, according to Dubois. Christopher M. Fierro is running unopposed to for Picard’s old seat in the upcoming Nov. 4 general election.
“We wouldn’t be going forward with it if I didn’t anticipate there was a good chance of it passing,” Dubois said of the legislation.
Picard plans to re-file the bill in Senate for the coming session under that body’s November pre-filings but said it will still need to pass in the house and the Governor’s desk to become law.
  Dubois believes clothing can spark behavior problems among students and also puts pressure on financially disadvantaged families to keep up with the expensive clothing worn by some of their peers.
 The district has addressed some of the more flagrant styles of school clothing-- such as the trend to wear pajamas to school cropping up several years ago-- through guidelines in the student handbook, Dubois said.
 But a wide range of clothing styles continue to be worn by students including low-riding pants on boys, gang-color garb and sometimes sexually provocative outfits Dubois described as inappropriate for the school environment.
 “I think it’s shameful the way some kids dress,” he said. “If everyone dressed the same, they would be looking at each other as equals,” he said.
 The first step in adopting a uniform will be the decision on what is appropriate and affordable attire for students to wear, Dubois said. The school committee will then have to approve the method of supplying that clothing to students.
  One of the parents appointed to the subcommittee has had children in local parochial schools where uniforms are required and plans to share with her peers the advantages of that rule for parents, he said.
 The students to be appointed to the panel by their principals will also be able to give the adults an indication of what students would be willing to wear, he noted.
 The legislation before the General Assembly requires the school department to give parents 90 days notice before the change takes effect but if the subcommittee works this winter, Dubois said everything should be ready to make the change with more than that amount of notice before the next school year.
 Already named to the committee are Brenda Galvin, Donna Houle, Monique Bergeron, Allen Auclair, Wendy Lepiors, Alethea Forcier, Jennifer Abramek, Tony Gabriele, Paula Dube, and Sharon Mann.