Nine students, two staff members, nearly $40,000 dollars, and countless hours of preparation: All for four hours on one night.

The people behind the process of organizing prom this year are English IV teacher Jeanny Haneline, assistant principal Amy Obenhaus and the current prom committee made up of juniors. Haneline has been a major organizer of prom for about five years. Prom will be held at the Perot museum on May 6.

“This year, there’s more to do,” Obenhaus said. “Even if you don’t like to dance, there’s all sorts of exhibits that you’re going to be able to go and walk around and look. So I think it’s going to cater to more people this year than any years past with it being [at the Perot museum].”

The theme, “City Lights,” was decided by the prom committee along with the tag line, “Shine bright in the city.” Haneline said the sophomores who run for the junior class position are in charge of helping out with prom. She said because seniors help out too, it’s more of a prom committee. Students on the committee help out with ticket sales as well.  

We came up with the theme once we found out the place we were having it,” junior Shalie Abraham said. “The Perot is in downtown Dallas which is the city. So we got the idea of “City Lights” by thinking of the Dallas city lights.”

Haneline booked the Perot museum around January of last year. She has already booked Cityplace for next years’ prom.

“The first year I took it over, after prom is when they used to [book a venue], and all the venues would already be booked,” Haneline said. “So, we do it way early to make sure we secure the venue before the event.”

This year the budget for prom was $39,890. Haneline said the budget usually ranges from $38,000-$39,000. The money spent includes catering, parking, a decorator and renting the Perot museum.

“Pretty much our budget is set at the beginning of the year once I have the venue, and I start putting in deposits for all the other things,” Haneline said. “So we have that number going in the ticket sales, and then we know that we have to get to that number. Then we have to raise enough money to pay for the deposit for next year.”

This is the first time the Perot museum has been used for prom. Obenhaus said because the facility is the largest prom has been in, it has taken a little more planning.

“It’s a lot of preparation, especially with the Perot museum,” Obenhaus said. “We have about 33 teacher volunteers needed because it’s four different floors. We have to have supervision on all four different floors, and this is probably the largest facility that we’ve used for prom. So, it’s been a little more preparation to organize teachers and rotations of what floor they have to be on at what hour, and due to the amount of space available to us.”

Organizing prom can get stressful with ticket sales and the new prom form, which is supposed to be filled out if someone not from Hebron is attending prom. But, according to Haneline, it’s definitely worth all the work for one very important night.

“It’s great the night we go seeing all the kids dressed up; most of the time I don’t recognize them because they look completely different,” Haneline said. “Not to sound cliche, but it’s a very magical night.”