The school yearbook is created each year by student staff members through spring planning, monthly production deadlines and collaboration, finishing each March to preserve snapshots of the school year.
The staff works closely with Jostens, the yearbook publishing company, and began planning this year’s book, themed “The Story Unfolds,” in April 2025. The yearbook was finished in March and was sold to 540 students, including 121 freshmen, 94 sophomores, 81 juniors and 244 seniors. The book, which costs 130 dollars each for Jostens to produce and print, was sold at a discounted and final price of 120 dollars to make it more accessible to students.
The club worked to lower the price by incentivising early purchases. This year, students were able to buy a book for as low as 100 dollars if they did so in the fall.
“Jostens will tell us the break-even price…and we’ve had excess money in the accounts, we’ve had a discount, at a loss for us, to make [the yearbook] a little more accessible [for students to purchase],” yearbook adviser and math teacher Karla Reynolds said.
One change under Reynolds’ four years of leadership has been an increased focus on representing more student clubs and activities throughout the yearbook, including spring events that appear in the following year’s edition. The club has also found ways to include more student expression.
“We’ve added some more student artwork inside the book, just trying to have more representation,” Reynolds said. “I think that [continued] further this year, so I’d like to keep that going.”
In addition, Reynolds hopes future editions feature more written content.
“[There’s writing] on the cover and divider pages with blurbs, following the theme and then talking about what’s in it,” Reynolds said. “However, pages could have more writing, [like on] sports pages about the captain or a summary of the season might be nice, too.”
Staff members complete monthly deadlines throughout the school year, producing approximately 52 pages each month from November to March.
“There was a pretty hard deadline,” freshman editor Allison Konarski said. “If we don’t have the pages done by then, they’re not going to be in the yearbook, so we have to meet that.”
Despite the demanding schedule, the goal of the yearbook remains the same: capturing memories from the school year.
“[The purpose of the yearbook] is definitely to create something that reminds people of their year,” freshman editor Ellery Miller said.
For Konarski, the finished yearbook made the months of work worthwhile.
“Seeing the yearbook in the end and how much work we all put into it was really great,” Konarski said.
Unlike some schools where the construction of the school yearbook is offered as a class, the publication is produced through an extracurricular club, allowing students to contribute in a variety of different ways.
“The nice thing is you get to play around with layout, design, phototaking, writing and journalism,” Reynolds said. “[Whatever] you like, you can find it.”
The experience behind the yearbook extends beyond layout and design.
“People think it’s a lot more hard work than it actually is,” Konarski said. “We have so much fun in all the meetings. We’re all friends; we all love each other.”
