Has anyone relayed your problems with Scholastic to the Rep or anyone up their chain of command?

We've found that they hae been pretty responsive to our problems/ compalints ('cept the increase in profit margin- but we really dont do it for the profit anyway- I'm just a $$$ grubbing b#&@$*d- Hope I can say that.

I do agree don't put the junk out (or restrict it to certain days (our Fall and Spring are both 5-7 days)

We love Scholastic and hope you can find an new or have them resolve your concerns

[ 05-21-2005, 02:40 AM: Message edited by: Shawn ]

Thank you for all the discussion - I wish our school was one of those receiving the great Scholastic service, but we were not. I cannot even tell you the name of our rep! We did not focus our two book fairs as fundraisers - we did increase our book inventory, but the whole point was to get books into the hands of children and their families. Additionally, we hold two totally free family fun nights a year - that makes at least four family focused events each school year... I loved the idea about putting the receipts into a drawing for a shirt! Any other fun things you add to your book fairs?

We did not use Scholastic this year. Our bookfair committee was not happy with their service and like many other people have said, we do all the work and they get the majority of the money.

So this past fall we went with a local bookstore in town. We were able to pick out specific books, we placed special orders and were restocked everyday.

We sold more than we had in the past with Scholastic, our profit was less but we were fine with that. The kids, parents and teachers were much happier with the selection and we were helping a local company that was very hands on as opposed to a national company that never really did anything for us.

We will be using that local bookstore again.

I have been extremely happy with the Scholastic book fair people. I think I received a call from my representative once a week as well as an email. I also received two visits from the field representative. One right before the fair and one during the fair. They both returned my calls and emails quickly. They even accidentally sent me some wrong books when I placed and order with them and I was told to keep them at their expense. Only problem I would say is that the set up and take down is a little time consuming but to see the teachers and students enjoy themsleves with games and prizes during our bookfair was worth it. We did the coloring contest, the how many goldfish game, and we did a drawing of the receipts to give away t-shirts. The children were not aloud to only just to buy pens they had to buy a book in order to buy the ink pens, erasers, and pencils.

We go through Scholastic also and have two book fairs one in the fall and one in spring along with our ice cream social. I'm not sure how they are to work with as the librarian handles this. But I can tell you we don't put all that junk out only the books, having a reading center area with the middle school aged kids reading to the elementary children. We also have a board with all the teachers rooms and the teacher lists any book she would like for her room. This is up the parents if they want to donate a book to their childs room. I should say we have ours as an evening event so the parents are with the kids. We also offer the book 1/2 off sale at the spring event. I think the event does ok nothing great but its more for getting the kids to have books and a social event.

HTH

Cindy

Bless you and thank you, thank you. I'm not dealing with this issue at our school, at least not to my knowledge, but look at my user name and you may guess what I'm talking about.