At Northeast, no uniform, no classroom: Parents' ire as students detained in auditorium

Parents at Northeast High were up in arms yesterday. They say that several students were either turned away or confined to the auditorium because they were not in uniform.

It was the first day that the school enforced a district-wide uniform policy put in place nine years ago, but parents clashed with school personnel as officials escorted students into the auditorium where some stayed for the entire school day.

Some parents said that their kids were targeted just for wearing the wrong shoes, or punished because they hadn't worn the mandatory duds.

At some point, officials began turning away students who were in uniform, said parent Stephanie Cruel. Those students were ordered to walk home or get on a truancy van, which took them home, she said.

Throughout the day, students complained to their parents by text message or by phone call that faculty had roped the doors to the auditorium closed and refused to take them off for about an hour.

One parent, Steve Drakely, returned to the school after his son, Ethan, 15, a freshman, sent him a text message stating that he, and other students, couldn't get out.

"This is bull----," Drakely said on his way inside the school. "When did this become Saint Northeast. Is the principal the pope?"

Brad Lempert's son, Seth, 18, a senior, who wore the uniform but had on brown shoes instead of the mandatory black, was one of the students confined to the auditorium.

"They had the fashion police at the door checking each kid with a fine-tooth comb," Lempert said. "The uniform was close enough. You'd think they would do something better with their time."

Lempert, who once worked at the school as a nonteaching assistant, also took issue with the principal's threat, according to his son, to keep violators from attending proms and class trips.

And the tie embroidered with the school's initials, which all boys must wear, is a safety hazard, Lempert said. "Say there's a fight and someone gets choked [with a tie]," he said. "Even cops wear clip-on ties for that reason."

School administrators did not use rope to lock down doors, and no students were turned away because they didn't wear a uniform, said school district spokesman Fernando Gallard.

The principal, Linda Carroll, declined to comment for the article, but allowed a Daily News reporter inside the school's auditorium, where about 70 students in regular clothes remained in areas divided by grade.

Earlier, students who had on the uniform, but were wearing the wrong shoes, were sent back to their classes.

Students who come to school without a uniform will stay in the auditorium doing schoolwork assigned them by content-area teachers, said Michael Silverman, the regional superintendent for the district's 32 neighborhood schools.

Lunch and grade-appropriate materials will be brought to them, he said. Students won't be marked absent. Silverman said that of 3,300 students, 60 students didn't wear uniforms.

But Edward Lloyd, chairman of the 42nd Ward Democratic City Committee, who has protested the district's policy since 2004, said that Northeast's response is illegal.

"That's a form of punishment," he said. "That's considered in-school suspension. They're using [the policy] to isolate the child, preventing them from getting an education."

Philadelphia's uniform policy, implemented in 2000, requires uniforms for all students in kindergarten through eighth grade. High schools have more discretion on whether to implement uniforms. According to the policy, any uniform must be easy to find and inexpensive, and available from more than one retailer.

But the cardigan sweater, embroidered with the school's logo, is available only at retailer Flynn and O'Hara. Some parents complain that they can't afford the $31 to $37 that the retailer charges.

Administrators say that discussion about uniforms began in October 2008 at monthly parent meetings.

But critics say that Carroll, principal for three years, enforced the policy because of Tony Danza's reality show, "Teach," which began filming there in September.