A Letter to Patriot High School

A Letter to Patriot High School by Cody Jones, Tyler Barton, and Parker Bayer is a collection of suggestions on behalf of PHS students on issues that they would like to see addressed and changed. Through the process of writing this letter, they collected signatures, researched school documents (LCAP, SPSA, Healthy Kids Survey), conducted Google surveys throughout campus, and spoke to many students about their experiences at PHS.

After the letter was released, the group met with PHS administration on November 3, 2025 to talk about the points in the letter and discuss possible solutions. The original letter and notes on the meeting are available to read by all PHS students.

Thank you to all who participated in the surveys and for all the conversations about your experiences at PHS. Thank you to the administration for providing a space to speak on all issues, and whether we, the seniors of 2026, experience the improved changes, we hope that future students at PHS will. That is the legacy we want to leave. To exercise our voice.

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On November 3rd, we, under the Vox Juventa movement, met with various administrators from Patriot High School and the Jurupa Unified School District regarding a letter we authored. “Letter to Patriot High School” outlines issues and, more importantly, solutions regarding the state of our school. The following is a summary of topics we addressed at the meeting:

Nutrition

TLDR: “Front of the Line Pass”; Vegetables will not change; a plausible menu change; increasing production if need be; and larger signage, such as TV screens or whiteboards.

SUMMARY: 

Students who wait in line and don’t get food (due to the line closing) will be compensated with a front-of-the-line pass. This pass will be able to be used once on any date. (Specific details are subject to change, but the general idea is confirmed.)

The state of the vegetables will be hard to change due to the lack of adequate heating and storage.

Food shortages are being addressed through tallies and tracking.

A new food menu is being looked into. We made a suggestion form (also on our linktree). All the responses will be sent straight to the district. (Though be aware that it is just a suggestion form.)

The menus will be more accessible. We discussed possible TV screens, large whiteboards/posters, or Chromebook wallpapers.         

Technology

TLDR: They will look into: mitigating the blue dot’s annoyance; getting rid of paper.co links (since we don’t pay for it); Patriot’s wifi website filter; getting an adblocker (specifically on the Chromebooks), changing the wallpaper on our Chromebooks, and adding back essential websites/important info when Chrome opens.

SUMMARY: 

They emphasized the importance of the transparency feature (blue dot). They agreed with the notion that it was annoying, but cited that it would be a difficult problem to tackle. They said it would be hard to remove it just for the high schools (stating that the elementary schools still need it). We suggested that maybe it can be docked, then reappear on restart. However, the fact that GoGuardian is such a big company makes it hard to propose changes. Despite this, they said that they will look to mitigate its annoyance.

They said they will look into getting rid of all the paper.co features (Chrome extension, bookmarks, etc.) since we do not pay for the service anymore.

Our school’s website filter was brought up as well. They told us that the issues came from switching filtering companies over the summer, RCOE (which is also the internet provider). They said there exists a helpdesk (7:30 AM to 4 PM) that teachers, students, and parents can call to unblock websites.

They said the reason many websites are blocked is that the ads displayed on the website might not be appropriate. Installing an adblocker on the Chromebooks was proposed as a solution for unblocking many websites, as well as reducing loading times on websites such as Quizlet.

Representation

H.O.R. will be announced across campus; a form to submit feedback (mentioned); and Advisory teachers will be encouraged to provide more assistance for the students. 

Conclusion

While we weren’t able to address everything we outlined in our topics, we feel that the meeting was overall very productive. We are very grateful to everyone who has supported and continues to support this movement. We are also very grateful to the Patriot High School and Jurupa Unified School District staff for facilitating this meeting and allowing us to voice our concerns.

We look forward to working with the staff to enact changes to our school.

-- Vox Juventa