By Brenda Erdahl
On an average year the Maple Lake Elementary Scholastic Book Fair takes in $4,000 to $6,000 which the school library then receives half of to buy items like books, furniture and activities, so when COVID stuck and events like the book fair started going virtual, librarian Sarah Thomas began to worry.
Shortly before the fair was supposed to open Principal Andy Sawatzke announced the bad news that because of pandemic concerns, conferences would be going virtual.
“I knew a lot of sales happen at conferences,” said Thomas who has been running the event the last two years of its 24-year history. “Parents also buy for teachers then, because they can see the lists of which teachers need books for their classrooms.”
With the live fair closed to parents the on-line fair became more important, unfortunately, the school gets only 24 percent of online sales from Scholastic, so Thomas began the push for ewallet.
Ewallet allows parents to put money into their child’s account which their student can then use, kind of like a credit card, to buy books in person. Parents, eager to help, latched on to the opportunity and the results were more than expected.
To read the rest of Brenda’s story about this year’s MLE book fair, grab a copy of the Maple Lake Messenger today!