September 16, 2025

Dear Students, Staff, Parents and Friends of Trona Joint Unified School District,

I wanted to take a minute of your time to touch base with you as we are well underway into the 2025-2026 school year. Today is the 23nd day of school in 25-26. At TJUSD we have already had some issues arise that I wanted to communicate to our constituency about. These issues are not life-threatening or earth-shattering, but they are important to us as we seek to accomplish our vision of “Educating, Empowering, and Engaging” all of our students. I am going to use my forum in writing this letter and the accompanying video message to address two topics of concern as we move through this school year.

The first topic of concern is STUDENT ALTERCATIONS/FIGHTS. While TJUSD is not overrun with an abundance of fights, and this year there have been very few so far.  (I’m hoping that trend continues!) However, I do want to address a specific aspect of fights on or off campus as it relates to bystanders and inciters. We have experienced that other students have encouraged altercations to take place and then have observed and recorded the event on their phones. After discussing this with our building principals and administrative staff I am sending the message that discipline will be administered to students who record the altercation as well as those who participate. Also, if students make special arrangements to observe a fight, such as riding the wrong bus to watch, they may be subject to discipline as well. While we realize that conflict and fighting are part of the human condition, we want to do what we can to prevent fights and encourage our students not to be part of promoting them with our students.

The second concern centers around DRESS CODE. Recently TJUSD experienced somewhat of a firestorm on social media around dress code when the current rules were enforced. This led to the school board asking me to schedule a community forum about the dress code. This past Wednesday (September 10, 2025) the board held a workshop to gather input from attendees about the issue. Only a few members of the community were in attendance, but those who were here shared thoughts and ideas about how to improve our dress code and how we (TJUSD staff and administration) could better enforce a reasonable dress code for students. With that in mind, TJUSD still is seeking your input through a survey. This survey will be sent our through Parent Square and will be posted on the district website later today or tomorrow (as I write this our internet service is down). We will leave the survey open for a couple of weeks for you to share your thoughts and ideas about dress. The survey will close on Friday, October 3, 2025. After the survey information is tabulated the results will be presented to the school board and a plan for consideration of potential changes to the dress code will be considered.

Thanks so much for helping make the beginning of the school-year a successful one. I look forward to continuing to communicate through these written and video messages as we seek to “Educate, Empower, and Engage” all of our students here at Trona Joint Unified School District.

Sincerely,

Dr. Jerry Jennex, Superintendent

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​Link to Dress Code Survey