The envelope says “Yes you can stop time. You can even frame it.” That might be true – that is if there was a photo to frame at all. 

This year, the senior portraits process stumbled because many students didn’t get their appointment times for their pictures. The exact magnitude of this stumble will vary depending on who you ask. According to administration, everything happened smoothly. For some seniors, there was confusion, but generally everything went fine. However, for quite a few seniors, it was a “really frustrating experience.” Just take a look at Facebook – many students took their complaints online, scrambling to find answers.

Therefore, unless there is better communication between Prestige Portraits and administration, future seniors as well as other students may continue to be subject to the same “frustrating experience.”

So how did this all come about?

Prestige Portraits has been working with MVHS for over a dozen years. Between the two of them, the process has been perfected to a science.

Student appointment times, scheduled for the August before the start of school, would be determined in April or May and students would be notified six weeks in advance in June. In August, the photographers would take pictures for three weeks.

But the scheduling that was supposed to take place in the spring of this year, never happened. As it turns out, the people in charge of scheduling, both from the administration and Prestige Portraits, were relatively new to their positions and therefore didn’t do things the way they were usually done. In addition, neither administration nor Prestige Portraits were aware of the miscommunication until much later.

As a result, the school and Prestige Portraits had to resort to plan B; the seniors would have a two-week notice and the appointments would take place after the start of school on Aug. 25 and Aug. 26. The photographers also would have half the time to take pictures than they normally had, according to Prestige Portraits.

Due to the rush, it does not come as a surprise that fewer seniors this year have had their portrait taken this year compared to last year. Last year, the number of seniors photographed for the senior portraits was about 90 percent.

This year, the number of senior photographed was 82 percent.

Additionally, five to 10 percent of seniors still need to have retakes, according to Prestige Portraits. Of course, in a senior population about 650, there are some other minor factors at play, mostly regarding students that come and go. A handful of students drop out of school, transfer or just don’t care about senior pictures. Nevertheless, the company has noted that there have been more retakes this year.

The administration and Prestige Portraits should have made sure that the people in charge of the senior portraits process, or any other picture for that matter, were well informed on the traditional procedures. Moreover, the people in charge of the process ought to have clarified their instructions with others better versed in the system to avoid having detecting the miscommunication so late.

As for the superintendents on both parties, the people who are familiar with the usual procedure, they should have been more involved in the process in order to make sure everything was running smoothly. Being involved in the final scramble doesn’t count.

Then there are the students, who had to deal with a “really frustrating experience” and, in some cases, had to call up the company and get rid of the middleman themselves. For them, the way things were done this year is simply not enough – the senior portraits process have more work to do before the next time they take students’ pictures.