Talk to us
Bring the week that went wrong, not the week that went well
There is no form on this site, no trial to start and nothing to buy. What there is, is a conversation with the people building it — and it is worth more if it starts from the part of your year that hurt.
Bring one of these
The composite that had to be redone. Tell us what changed between the photograph and the print, and we will tell you which part of that this removes and which part it does not.
The family who withdrew in March. How did that reach the yearbook this year? If the answer is a person remembering, that is the clearest case for changing anything, and it is a five-minute conversation.
The communications office and the website. If somebody in your district is expecting to source images from elementary picture day, we should establish in the first ten minutes that this will not do that.
The transfer between two of your own buildings. A student who moves in February is the cleanest test of whether a system is reading your roster or a copy of it, and it is a good question to ask any vendor.
Three things we will say before you ask
All three have ended conversations for us. We say them early because a term is expensive and ten minutes is not.
One. A signed release does not put an elementary student on the open web through this. The block sits under the form and has no override.
Two. Families cannot buy anything today. Live payment is not turned on, so there is no checkout, no price and no order form.
Three. A composite with a withdrawn family has a gap in it, and the gap is not filled with anything.
If any of those is a deal-breaker, that is a legitimate outcome and it is better reached now.
What we would need, if it goes further
Your roster, wherever it lives. This is the thing everything hangs off, which is why the first substantive step is never about photographs. If your district maintains it centrally, that is easier rather than harder.
Your actual release form. Not a description of it — the document. The most common finding is that the form is an opt-out and the system is an opt-in, which is a real difference about the families who never returned the packet.
Who decides. An elementary school rarely buys alone. Knowing whether this is a building decision, a district decision or a shared one changes what the second conversation should be.
Questions about the conversation itself
Is there a self-serve trial?
No, because setting this up against a real roster is work rather than a signup. A demonstration happens against your own data after somebody has spoken with you. That is slower than a button and it produces an answer you can take to a board meeting.
Will you contact our district office directly?
Not unless you ask us to. If a building principal starts the conversation, it stays with the principal until you decide otherwise. Going over somebody's head is a good way to lose a school and we have no interest in it.
Do we have to decide anything at the end?
There is nothing to decide about money, because there is nothing to buy: the platform is free to the school and live payment is not turned on. The only decision at the end of a first conversation is whether there is a second one.
What if we are mid-contract with a photography company?
That is usually fine and frequently the right time to talk, because this is the school's side of the arrangement rather than the studio's. Knowing what your current agreement says about the underlying frames is worth doing regardless of whether you ever talk to us again.
Where it happens
Through the platform’s own front door at homeroom.software, where a person at Stanley Studios picks it up. This site collects nothing from you: no form, no address to hand over before you can read anything, and no reason to identify yourself to look around.
What follows is a conversation rather than a sequence. There is nothing to buy at the end of it, and that is the actual state of the product rather than a soft close.