Yearbook hero Tina Schumacher tackles turnover

Treering Yearbook Heroes is a monthly feature focusing on yearbook tips and tricks. 

When the yearbook adviser left St. Francis, a new teacher inherited the job. Then another. And another. Then, it was Tina Schumacher’s turn. She inherited unsold books and a program that was in the red. School leadership charged her with getting the yearbook program out of debt.

What did you discover when you became the adviser?

With our previous publisher, you had to sell a minimum number of books. And we weren't always selling that minimum, but we had to buy that many. In a closet at the school is anywhere from eight to 15 yearbooks, depending on the year.  And then the kids would sell ads to go in the back, which didn’t make up the difference.

How did you turn things around?

I started hunting. I thought, there's gotta be a different way. When I found Treering, it was too good to be true. Those are the words that I said to the principal. I told her I found a way we can make our yearbooks and make money doing it. 

Our first year we did a tiered sponsorship for local businesses. We just made platinum level, gold, etc. donor levels and put a list of names of supporters rather than ads to save on pages. I told them it would probably be the last time we would ask them, and we have been out of debt ever since. I was able to buy a new camera and a couple new lenses. 

We are never in any kind of a money crunch, which is great, but on top of that we have really great books.

You create an elementary yearbook, a secondary one, and a book for the One Act. How do you balance multiple books at once?

When we started using it, the kids knew more than I did. They showed me around and taught me how to do things. I'm not necessarily the one making the high school yearbook: it's theirs, so they can do with it as they see fit provided as long as it's acceptable by me.

For eight years, I’ve made a book of still photos from our One Act; I moved that over to Treering. It's got pictures of the cast and crew working on things. It's mostly a book of the story of the play.

I think this is my fourth elementary book. Parents loved it. It started because I had too many students in journalism class and they needed something to do. I really kind of handle that book myself now.

How does Treering Yearbooks support you?

It is nice to be self-sufficient. If we continue to use this company we will not have to worry about being in debt. 

Also, if I don't know what to do or forget how to do it, I contact support and they walk me right through it and ask if I need additional help, No one acts like I should know this by now.