By Amy Joles (Contact / Staff Bio)
May 6, 2009 - 09:54 a.m. EST

CARO — Faces of the most outstanding alumni are slowly making their way back to the halls of Caro High School.

Since 2007, the high school’s photography class has been hard at work, scanning, restoring and reprinting all of the 7x9 pictures of the district’s valedictorians, salutatorians and notable athletes. The photos were removed during a construction project at the school.

“We’ll be all done with them next year for sure,” said Amanda Dinkel, Caro’s photography teacher.

About 900 pictures will eventually grace the hallways. The pictures of valedictorians and salutatorians extend back to 1958. Athletes are pictured back through 1968.

Some of the older photos were in poor shape after adhering to the glass and old frames. Dinkel and her students took on the task of restoring the pictures, using a computer program, Adobe Photoshop.

“There were chunks missing from the older photos,” said Whittney Long, 17, a Caro junior who is currently involved in the photo restoration process. “We had to use a stamp tool (in Photoshop) and replace pieces of the picture.”

Long said she recognizes some of the names of students in the photos, but since they are working on photos of high school students from the 1990s, she is too young to know them.

Currently, photos through 1990 are posted in the hallway. The students have printed photos for the next two years, which will be posted soon.

“We usually wait a little while and get a good amount done before we have Mr. (Mark ) Kish hang them on the wall,” said Dinkel. “That way he doesn’t just have to hang a few - he can hang several years of pictures and really get a good chunk on the wall.”

Instead of having nameplates on each photo, the students are printing the names on the photo - saving money and ensuring that each person is labeled for years to come.

“We won’t have to worry about nameplates falling off and getting lost,” Dinkel said.

The original photos that once hung in the hallways will eventually be available for families to claim when the project is complete.

In other news at Caro Schools, it is likely that the District will offer a retirement incentive package to high- seniority teachers this month. At last Monday’s Caro Board of Education workshop meeting, there was some discussion on offering teachers the option.

Superintendent Neil Beckwith said the district would need a minimum of 4-5 teachers to take the incentive package and a maximum of seven. Teachers would have 30 days to consider the offer.

“When you talk about offering a voluntary separation incentive, you need to be thinking of a few things,” Beckwith told the board. “You need to be in lay-off mode. You need to be in the position to where you don’t have to replace the position and you need to find a number that works.

“But we are still going to have to position ourselves for a lay-off.”

The last retirement incentive that the district offered, allowed teachers $21,000 over three years.

Amy Joles is the editor of the Tuscola County Advertiser. She can be reached at joles@tcadvertiser.com.