For all of Yorktown’s positives, there are definitely more than a few negatives. Over the years students have been stockpiling complaints with little to no results coming into effect. In the school’s defense, with a school of this size there has got to be some room for improvement. However, the many issues student’s have seem to be things that are somewhat easy to fix. Here are a few problems that need to be changed.

Turning of Water Fountains from Cold to Warm

There is nothing worse than your expectations getting shattered. Building something up in your mind, placing that thought to the highest peak and putting indescribable expectations on one thing. You have been waiting for this moment for the past two minutes, it is FINALLY TIME. Time for the cool, brisk taste of water to grace your mouth. It is now time to do something that is necessary for human survival. It is time to take a cool sip of water from a high school water fountain.

Once force has been applied to the button you look forward to the cool stream of water to gradually fill your mouth. You think this will change your day. The sweet cool taste of water should be amazing! The key here is should. Once you finally sweet the hydrogen and oxygen compound you are met with a rude awakening. The water from your once reliable water fountain that you use every day has changed from cool and amazing water that it had the day before to a murky, warm, and somewhat bitter taste. Expectations are effectively shattered and for a few moments, nothing seems like it will be okay ever again.

Agenda Notebooks

Few students use the small five and a half, by eight-and-a-half-inch agenda that is supplied by our school at the start of every year. The amount of space left to write homework is hardly enough to write four words in 11 size Arial font. The lack thereof space creates several issues. Some of the many issues are as follows, running out of crucial line space to sometimes write several assignments that will greatly impact one’s grade and might result in bad and legible handwriting, possibly making the student not able to read their handwriting and not doing their homework. There are so many problems caused with the agenda half of them could not even be written. Agendas have caused so many issues students have gone out of their way to make the purchase of their own agenda.

Patriot Period

If you were to ask people last year what their part of Wednesdays and Thursdays, many people would have almost definitely said Patriot Period. It is interesting how much things can change in approximately ninety days. The once universally loved period that happened twice a week, is now nearly universally hated. Patriot Period has changed to an attempt to make people do work, but the hypocrisy in the new rules are almost laughable. Making students stay in their third period may result in absolutely NOTHING getting done. Imagine having P.E. third period, that is definitely an ideal room to be in to get help with Algebra. The new Patriot Pass Rule works against the goal of trying to get more work done. Teachers are now limited to a certain amount of students and are not able to help nearly as many students as they did in years past. These new rules delay work from being done and are simply ineffective.

On prominent school websites like GreatSchools and Niche Yorktown is rated four out of five stars and 3.8 out of five stars respectively. Maybe if these changes were made to water fountains, agenda and the new Patriot Period rules, maybe Yorktown would be a five star school.