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Vendor fair attendees fill the Schuyler Central High School gym on Aug. 9 to meet with businesses and prepare for the new school year.
Kim Ennen of Anytime Ftiness stands behind her table at the vendor fair at Schuyler Central High School on Aug. 9.
Every year, Schuyler Community Schools is obligated to provide staff with information and the opportunity to talk to providers of various financial, insurance and other services the school district offers partnerships with.
According to Curriculum Director Dave Gibbons, this used to live in long-form lecture-type meetings where vendors made pitches for their services following speeches by administrative staff.
“In the past what we had done was that morning we would have a big all-district staff meeting and the superintendent would get up and speak,” Gibbons said.
On Aug. 9, the school district organized a vendor fair for staff in lieu of the typical format. While this was the second year, Gibbons said it was more streamlined and much preferred to the older format.
“It started turning into basically a four-hour ‘listen to people talk and try to sell me stuff’ and that’s just not a great way to start the school year off,” Gibbons said
The idea came from typical conferences, where vendors set up booths and have a representative to answer questions.
“Any time you go to a conference or workshop, oftentimes there’s an area with vendors. If you have a curriculum conference, for instance, you have people selling textbooks,” Gibbons said.
Dairy Queen even brought Dilly Bars for those in attendance, Gibbons said. To access them, people had to pass the other tables.
Audra Jedlicka, executive director of the Schuyler Area Chamber of Commerce, added on a second school-business event in the downtown walking tour of Schuyler businesses that afternoon.
“it was just really relaxing for them and I asked them just to share their favorite thing at each individual store and those were all different. They were excited,” Jedlicka said.
Jedlicka said this was as much for the staff as it was the businesses, as many of the staff hadn’t been in the places on the tour before.
“It’s great for our businesses and it’s a lot of new people that had not been in the door. It was just a really good combination working day between the school and the business sector, so the chamber appreciates that,” Jedlicka said.
Jedlicka added that next year, the chamber wants to see more attendees at the business tour, but that the location may change to feature other businesses.
“Honestly I thought it went really smooth. What I would change is just growing those numbers. We focused on the afternoon being downtown so maybe next year we could rotate every other year and introduce them to the outskirts businesses,” Jedlicka said.
The staff and chamber capped off the day with a ribbon-cutting at the new K-1 Dual-Language Facility on 12th Street.
“There’s just an excitement in the air when the staff comes back and they’re preparing,” Jedlicka said. “It was a really long day but everybody was really happy with how it all turned out.”
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Vendor fair attendees fill the Schuyler Central High School gym on Aug. 9 to meet with businesses and prepare for the new school year.
Kim Ennen of Anytime Ftiness stands behind her table at the vendor fair at Schuyler Central High School on Aug. 9.
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