Sounds like an elementary school in my Bay Area district. Lottery admissions. Parents are required to volunteer ~10 hours per year and pay for uniforms. The school is 90% Asian even though Asians make up 1/3 of the city.
Another one that's more art focused and requires 4 hours of volunteering PER WEEK is majority white even though whites are 1/3 of the population.
There are lots of benefits to uniforms. In NSW (Australia) public schools have uniforms, and parents pay for them. Low income families are generally able to obtain financial assistance through some grant, or fundraising programme; sometimes through donated uniforms.
Uniforms actually help with socio-economic gaps: everybody dresses the same, regardless of whether you can afford more expensive status symbol clothing or not.
I'm not super knowledgeable on the topic of uniforms, but don't other things just become the status symbol? Phones, laptops, cars, purses? A lot of these things already have premium brands that most people on this site could name trivially.
I mean yes, but you don't even need to make that leap. Just look at outwear, shoes, and clothing accessories.
fwiw, I'm also a big fan of uniforms and the uniform separates can typically be purchased at places like Old Navy or Target for <$10/item (compared to my kid's soccer uniforms, which run $300-400 for the kit and have to be refreshed every year).
I'm more thinking from the kid's point of view. These are the formative years when a human being develops one's own identity and sense of self-worth. Mandatory school uniforms encourage, well, uniformity instead of diversity (on a psychological level), and I doubt that's healthy for a developing mind.
In particular, justifying school uniforms because "you can't tell the rich kids from the poor kids" deprives both poor kids from learning how to positively interact with rich kids and rich kids from learning how to positively interact with poor kids. Being able to interact with people of wide socioeconomic diversity is a valuable skill.
I've also heard a lot of anecdotal evidence about school uniforms being problematic in inner cities because they'll inadvertently align with gang colors, meaning that students walking to/from school would have to either bring a change of clothes (and change at school twice a day) or risk being targeted for gang violence.
I'll have a side of facts to go with your speculations, please.
I don't necessarily disagree, but you can really form any number of arguments and reach wildly different conclusions (try it, for a few you don't like). Without evidence (not anecdotes) to prefer one over the other, you're really biasing yourself to how you feel the world ought to work.
School uniforms is somewhere where Facebook has facilitated some social good.
Various community facebook groups and "buy nothing" facebook groups facilitate giving away items you no longer require. That the items be given for free, no strings attached is often a firm requirement.
School uniforms are a common item to be given away because children frequently outgrow uniforms long before they wear out.
Its very helpful for families with young children as they outgrow clothes incredibly fast and also don't yet have any resistance to the idea of second hand clothing.
Another one that's more art focused and requires 4 hours of volunteering PER WEEK is majority white even though whites are 1/3 of the population.