Book Fair Thank You

From Diane Lagace

A HUGE thank you for helping to make our book fair a success last month.  DRUM…ROLL….

We achieved our main goal – to promote reading and watching the children discover new books – success has no price tag!

We can also be proud that from the sale of used books we raised $2472.50.  Half of these sales go to Hawthorne School Parent Council and we appreciate their help to organize this event.

Also a huge thanks to Margaret-Anne our librarian and everyone who purchased items at the Fesitval du livre sale that she had setup and ran voluntarily.   Collectively, the sale ended up earning $750 worth of new books for the library collection with selections from the materials for sale with input from staff, students and parents.  Since some parents were asking, also a good time to clarify that the Scholastic sales that come home from classroom, any earning go back into the classroom books, whereas this event and the English Scholastic sale in the spring help to add new books into our library.

We also made $140 from chili sale with thanks to Crystal, Melissa, and the Thompson family for organizing and cooking.

The bake sale also made $285 as a result of the delicious treats made by our volunteer bakers.

So in the end this event raised $1,671.25.  

If you have not heard recently we just approved to spend $10,000 of PP Parent Council funds to begin the much needed renovation of our library, so this money will be put to good use.

This event really does take many hands, and I am sure I will miss some so sorry but a shout out with big THANKS to:

• • All the people that attended the event and bought books
  • The many families that donated books at the school drop off, the best books always come from these private collections.  Any books we had left went to good hands including the Ottawa Hospital, St Vincent de Paul, and Roberta Bondar school for their sales;
  • The many families that distributed the flyers around their neighborhood;
  • Drivers (Carolynn and Liz), that helped me pick up the generous donations of books from Steve Maclean Public School after their sale;
  • Matthew and Jennifer who help me with notifications and our press releases
  • The parents (especially the many new faces this year) that sorted and lifted all our books during the week and nights the week prior to the sale – just to sort that pile takes surprisingly about 75 hours;
  • An efficient group of volunteers lead by Karen that set-up the book sale on Thursday in a record 2hrs; clearly I am not needed;)
  • The teachers and our council teacher reps Kathleen and Mary Gean, who organized and encouraged teachers to bring their classes through on Friday and collected books for their classrooms – this benefitted many students;
  • Starbucks at the Train yards for the donation of the coffee, which Amy picked up for us;
  • Many high school volunteers and few parents that hung in there to do the painful but really fast effort at the end to get the gym empty by 3pm;
  • Our cashiers, as well as Rick our treasurer, who counted and organized credit card sales;
  • The Pleasant Park custodians, with Tharshan in the lead, for all they did to help us;
  • Principle Thibeault for all the support and helping with planning and attending this event;

 

• To the main core of ~25 volunteers that made this happen – huge thanks – could not have done it without you

 

I hoped you enjoyed this community school event and as always welcome any feedback.

Diane Lagace