District officials say they will enforce the new policy, which calls for students to be suspended for three days after their fifth uniform violation.
Carl's parents, Will and Tina Stanton, are behind their son's resistance. They say the board is limiting students' freedom of speech.
"They're training them to be drones in a bank," said Will Stanton, 47, a self-employed carpenter. "It shows the lack of imagination they have. And these are the people who are supposed to be guiding our kids."
School board members cited school shootings around the country in their explanation for requiring uniforms, which they say encourage discipline and help administrators spot strangers in schools. They also say uniforms lessen peer pressure to wear expensive or trendy clothes.
Board president W. Gordon Atherholt calls himself "more of a conformist" and said he wished the Stantons would give uniforms a chance.
"I don't look at it as taking someone's civil rights away or denying them anything," Atherholt said. "We're not cutting off their right arms. We're not threatening to hang them from the gallows. We're trying to do something we think is good for the Ridley School District."
The Stantons see the policy as government intrusion. "The issue is, what right does the school board have to tell me how to dress my child?" Will Stanton said.
The family's activism has a history. Will Stanton's father was a conscientious objector during World War II, and Will himself organized antiwar protests and prisoners' rights rallies at the Delaware County Prison in the 1970s.
Tina Stanton, 40, a part-time caregiver for an elderly woman, recalls watching a Washington protest rally on television news as a child and catching a glimpse of her mother's scarf in the crowd. Tina Stanton lost a Democratic bid for a school board seat in 1997.
In this protest, the odds are against the Stantons.
