Getting schooled

Posted by Gordon King on Apr 29, 2011 | Comments Off

We often take photos at area schools – elementary, middle schools and high schools. To take photos in schools we first need administrators’ permission to be there. And, just as important, we need parental permission to take photos of the students. Our circulation includes many school districts – 16 or so – and each school district has it’s own photo policy. How those permissions are handled makes our jobs easy or hard and, in some cases, determines if a youngster gets into the paper (or on our website) or not.

Some districts have a definite policy but some don’t. Sometimes the policy is cumbersome and effectively rules out most opportunities for good photography. And most important, the policy keeps kids out of the newspaper and off our website because it so user-unfriendly.

In the last two weeks I’ve had assignments at schools where administrators asked me to not show students’ faces because there were no parental permissions already on file. If I did have a photo showing a student’s face a form would have to be sent home to the parent, the parent would have to sign it and the form would have to be returned to the school. Then the school would call me with the permission. Following this process is simply not possible when I’m facing a same-day deadline on the photo.

It’s not a policy which will get kids’ faces into the newspaper.

This is how I handled the most recent assignment at which I was asked to not show kids’ faces.

A second photo.

There are sometimes good reasons to not have a youngster’s photo in the newspaper or on a website (such as a foster child or when there is a parental custody issue). I think it’s good to show kids in school and what they’re doing and school districts should have a functional policy in place to allow that.

–Gordon King