Student speaks out on controversial Yucca Valley HS yearbook photos

The end of the school year is just around the corner at Yucca Valley High School.

While many students are walking away with their yearbooks, some parents say they’re concerned about a couple of pictures printed in the book.

Morongo Unified School District officials said the photos appear in the Senior Superlatives section of this year’s yearbook. One photo, titled ‘Teacher’s Nightmare’, shows a male student holding a gun, aimed at a book, and a female student holding a knife over a different book.

Another photo shows two students lighting a prop that is made to look like a bomb.

Poll: Do you think the yearbook photos are inappropriate?

Superintendent Tom Baumgarten said he was concerned the first time he saw the photos after the school released the yearbook earlier this week.

“In today’s world, there may be many interpretations of a picture,” Baumgarten said. “But anything that has a gun or a knife portrayed in a school setting can cause people concerns.”

Baumgarten said the district has taken many calls and received emails from parents about the photos, which were originally intended to be a parody.

“There were some parents that were upset, and there were some parents that understood that these were chosen by the seniors on the yearbook advisory group,” Baumgarten said. “They asked folks to participate, and they brought props in for their pictures.”

One of the students, Beth Gonzales, now tells CBS Local 2 and News Channel 3’s Kelley Moody, it wasn’t her idea or any of the other students to use those props or pose in the photos, but rather, the teacher in charge of the yearbook.

“How am I going to be looked at in the future?” says Gonzales, “Am I going to be that girl with the knife in the picture?”

Gonzales says she wasn’t happy with being labeled teacher’s worst nightmare and would have rather been class clown. Little did she know the real social media nightmare she would later be faced with.

“You’ve got a young black man with a gun, and a young Hispanic girl with a knife,” says Beth’s mother Corinna Gonzales, “What I saw was racial profiling.”

The Gonzales’ have numerous family members in the military. Beth is hoping to join the Navy.

“There were even some comments on there saying stuff about ISIS and that’s what the photo represents. I mean how is the military going to accept me if I represent ISIS?” Beth Gonzales asks.

The Gonzales family says they won’t let this go.

“I’ve placed a call to the district. I’ve placed a call to the school. And do you think I’ve received any call back? No,” says mother Corinna Gonzales.

The Gonzales family says the district and the school owe them an apology and hope the teacher will step forward and take accountability.

School officials said in an earlier interview they hope to move on.

“We have talked to the advisor. There was no malicious intent by the advisor, the students, the administration, or the district to portray anybody in a negative manor,” Baumgarten said. “We apologize if it did.”

Baumgarten said if parents want a refund for their yearbook, they will be paid in full.

He said the school does not intend on reprinting or recalling them.