After eight months of technical difficulties, missed deadlines, low sales and an unsupportive representative from the publisher, advisor for the yearbook Mick Battaglini and the yearbook class were forced to make a decision of either finishing the yearbook and distributing it over the summer or canceling the publication. After a serious discussion between the staff and Mr. Burns, the decision was made to cancel this year’s book.

Problems began at the beginning of the school year when the yearbook and journalism class could not access the computer lab because the computers were not readily available. Another issue was networking them and installing the publisher software. Although remodeling was complete, the class was not able to access the room until late September.

Deadlines were also not managed well by both the staff and the yearbook representative. “We submitted templates of what we wanted to use on CD before winter vacation but didn’t find out that we couldn’t use them until after vacation and that we had to submit them online, and by the time the second deadline rolled around their site had problems,” said Battaglini. “We got signed up for a program I knew wasn’t going to be feasible (online submissions) and we wouldn’t have had consistent [internet] access to make it feasible.”

Low yearbooks sales also pushed Battaglini’s decision. Using last year’s sales to estimate sales for this year, only 300 out of 2400 students bought a yearbook. Battaglini is convinced that the same pattern would just continue pressing the class, and decided it wasn’t worth the effort and hard work put into the book when not enough interest comes from the student.

As for those who already paid for their yearbook, in order to get any money back the school is going to fight a legal battle with the yearbook publisher. A court date hasn’t been announced yet, but a ruling will have to be made to decide how much of the $15,000 the school will get back.