For admissions and advancement at independent schools
Your contract is a better instrument than a district form. It still cannot do this one thing.
You negotiate directly with the families who chose you. You have no district above you and no board of education setting your paperwork. That is a genuinely stronger position than any public school has — and it does not lift the floor under a child of eleven.
The sentence an admissions director does not want
Where your students are under thirteen, their photographs cannot go onto the open web from here, and no enrolment contract changes it. The block is applied before any agreement is consulted. It has no override for a school, for a fee-paying family who actively wants it, or for a head with a viewbook at the printer.
We put it first because your job is filling seats and imagery is your collateral, which makes you the reader with the most to lose from finding out late. If your school is a lower school or a K-8, this covers your whole student body.
If you are a senior school, most of your students are over the line and the operative question becomes the family’s own permission instead — a completely different position. A school spanning both is carrying two regimes, and knowing which grades sit where is the first useful thing to establish.
What that leaves you is more than it sounds, and frequently better. Your campus, your facilities, your studios and grounds. Student work without a name attached. Your staff, who are adults and can agree for themselves. Your alumni, likewise. And students over the age floor with their family’s specific permission.
Schools that build that deliberately usually end up with stronger material than the ones filling every frame with children, because a prospective family reading on a Sunday evening is trying to picture their own child somewhere — and a well-photographed empty art room does that better than a group shot of somebody else’s.
Why this is not simply the elementary or the high school answer
Because governance is a separate dimension from grade level, and an independent school sits on both at once. A private K-8 is elementary and middle and private, and the third of those changes real things.
- The instrument is yours
- The motive is enrolment, not records
- Your families have more standing
- What we are not including
The instrument is yours
An enrolment contract, negotiated between you and a family, rather than a district release form administered by somebody you do not manage.
This is a real advantage and public schools do not have it. You can write it, revise it, and explain it to a family in person. You are not waiting on a central office to update a form, and you are not discovering in March that the version in circulation is three years old.
The corollary is that its clarity is entirely your responsibility. Nobody is going to hand you a better one.
The motive is enrolment, not records
For a public elementary principal, imagery is an obligation with a deadline. For you it is collateral with a metric attached.
That inverts what you need from a system. A principal wants to know that picture day produced a complete set and that the composite is right. You want to know what you can actually put in front of a family who is comparing three schools, and how fast you can get at it in the week the open morning is announced.
It is also why the constraint we opened with lands harder here than anywhere else in the family. It is not an inconvenience to your records function; it is a constraint on your product.
Your families have more standing
Fee-paying parents who chose you compare your delivery to consumer products, not to other schools.
They notice sooner, they say so directly, and the complaint carries more force because they have an exit. Schools in this sector tend to be more careful about imagery for exactly that reason, and it is a reasonable instinct rather than a cynical one.
The practical consequence is that the awkward group-photograph rule — one refusal takes the picture away from everybody — produces a sharper conversation here than in a public school, and it is worth being ready for it.
What we are not including
Parochial schools, which we model as their own category and which this site does not attempt to describe.
A school under religious governance has ownership, admissions and accountability arrangements of its own, and quietly folding those into “private” would be the kind of convenient blur that produces a bad fit two months in.
If you are one and this looks relevant, it may well be. Just do not assume the fit from the single fact that you are not a public school — that is the assumption we are declining to make on your behalf.
What the enrolment contract covers, and where it stops
The contract is doing real work in most of your uses. It is worth being precise about which ones, because the answer is not uniform and the exceptions are the expensive ones.
| The use | Does the contract reach it? | What actually governs |
|---|---|---|
| A family seeing their own child | Yes | The contract, and nobody is shown to anybody else |
| Imagery inside the school community | Largely | The contract plus each family's own permission |
| A fundraising appeal featuring a child | It should not | Its own agreement -- a contract to enrol is not a licence to solicit |
| Public marketing, students under thirteen | No, and nothing else does either | The age floor, applied before any agreement |
| Public marketing, students over thirteen | Only with a specific permission | The family's own, defaulting to no, per use |
| An alumnus, now an adult | No | Their own decision, which they can withdraw |
The whole account, including the question of whether agreement can be a condition of enrolment, is on the enrolment contract.
What is switched off
Nothing here can be bought. Live payment is not turned on, so there is no checkout, no price and no order form. The platform is free to the school, so there is no purchase to route through a business office either.
No AI decides who appears. Face matching is a capability we are building and is not turned on today, and it is never bundled into a publication permission.
We do not design your viewbook. This holds imagery and what governs it. Who designs, prints and mails the prospectus is a separate arrangement and you can leave it where it is.
We will not certify you. We describe what is blocked and when it is re-checked. Whether that satisfies your obligations is a conclusion for you and your counsel.
What a director asks first
We are independent and our families sign a contract with us. Does the age floor still apply?
Yes, in full. Independence changes the instrument -- your enrolment contract rather than a district release form -- and it changes who you negotiate with. It does not change the floor. A student under thirteen is held off the open web before any agreement is consulted, whoever pays the fees and whatever the contract says.
So what does an admissions office actually use?
Your campus, your facilities, your work, your staff with their own agreement, your alumni as adults, and photographs of students who are over the age floor with their family's specific permission. Schools that do this well end up with better material than schools filling the space with children, because a well-photographed art room tells a prospective family something a generic group shot does not.
How is this different from your elementary school site?
Governance is a separate axis from grade level, so a private K-8 is both at once. What differs here is the buyer and their motive: an admissions and advancement director for whom imagery is marketing collateral and the metric is enrolment, rather than a principal for whom it is a records function. The rules you inherit depend on the ages you teach, and those are set out on the sites for the bands you span.
Are you including parochial schools in this?
Not by default, and we would rather say so than quietly annex them. We model parochial schools separately, and a school in that category has governance, ownership and admissions arrangements of its own that this site does not attempt to describe. If you are one and this looks relevant, it may well be -- but do not assume the fit from the fact that you are not a public school.
What can we buy?
Nothing today. Live payment is not turned on, so there is no checkout, no price and no order form anywhere in this. The platform is free to the school, so there is also no purchase to route through a business office.