Chapel Hill-Carrboro chief offers yearbook update, apology after 12 students left out
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- Superintendent said 12 EC student portraits and names were left out of the 2026 yearbook.
- The district will give each omitted student a new professionally updated bound yearbook.
- Families can return yearbooks by June 23 for publisher rebinds or get mailed insert pages.
Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools Superintendent Rodney Trice told families Tuesday that all Chapel Hill High School students can get professionally updated 2026 yearbooks and that more changes are planned after 12 students were left out of the keepsake book.
Krista Caraway, the parent of two students in the CHHS Exceptional Children program, raised the issue with school and district officials in late May after discovering that neither of her children was individually pictured or named in the school’s 2026 yearbook.
The district initially offered to provide new yearbooks to the 12 omitted students, all of whom are in the school’s EC program, along with professionally produced insert pages for other students who wanted to add them to their yearbooks.
But Caraway pushed back, including on social media, asking the district to give every CHHS student a complete yearbook. She also has called out a recent social media video of Chapel Hill High graduates talking about their goals, none of whom were students with disabilities, she said.
It’s not the first time students with intellectual and developmental disabilities have been left out of Chapel Hill-Carrboro school yearbooks, several parents and district alumni have said.
“A yearbook is not simply a book. It is a historical record of who belonged,” Carraway said in a June 5 email to district officials. “When students are omitted from that record, especially after previous warnings about disability inclusion and previous omissions, the harm extends beyond a printing error.”
In a Tuesday update, Trice acknowledged the harm “is felt not only by those directly affected, but also by our community, because our district holds high values of inclusivity and belonging.”
“And while I regret that it may not be possible to undo all of the harm, we are working to make things right for the students and families who had every reason to expect proper inclusion, and so that we have an accurate 2026 Chapel Hill High School yearbook,” he said.
After summarizing what happened and additional steps the district will take to avoid it happening again, he also asked families for help correcting online social media posts and comments “that draw false conclusions, contain inaccurate/incomplete information, or make other accusations about this situation.”
“Even worse, the ugliest form of these comments make baseless judgments about what happened,” Trice said, but “making mistakes, correcting them, understanding their impact and learning from them is an integral part of life, especially in education.”
What happened to the student photos?
It was not intentional, Trice said, citing gaps in the school’s internal procedures and checks that led to the portraits and names of 12 EC students being left out of the yearbook.
“My heart breaks for the students who expected to see their picture. I join our school and our district in accepting responsibility for this mistake,” Trice said. “As superintendent and a parent, I recognize the harm and anger this has caused. I am deeply sorry.”
How it happened:
- District and school staff were learning a new student information system in August when the initial data was pulled for the yearbook publisher and photography company, he said. It did not properly assign grade levels to a group of students, so the “students were categorized in a way that inadvertently left them out of the standard yearbook database.”
- Students who had their pictures taken on Picture Day weren’t connected in the system to a name or grade level. The photos didn’t match student records and were left out of the final production process — “a critical checkpoint where we can correct missing or incomplete information,” Trice said.
- Photos of other students, which were taken by other photographers, were not provided to the school.
What is the district doing about it?
- Trice said staff will improve internal communications to make sure all senior portraits are collected from the companies and groups that take them.
- Staff will pull student rolls at the beginning of the school year, and check later in the year to account for students who start late.
- The district will update its verification processes before approving a final proof for publishing.
How can CHHS students get a new yearbook?
The district will give a new, professionally updated and bound yearbook to each Chapel Hill High student who was omitted, Trice said. Other CHHS students who bought yearbooks have two choices:
- Return their yearbook to the school by Tuesday, June 23, so the publisher can update and re-bind it. The school will return the updated book to the students.
- Receive professionally produced insert pages with the missing students through the mail at their home address.
This story was originally published June 9, 2026 at 5:47 PM.
