The annual Amador Valley High School club fair was supposed to be held on both September 23rd and 24th this year, however, it was canceled after the first day. Now, clubs and leadership are in an effort to find another time for a club fair this semester. 

Due to a sudden spike in temperature on the second of the planned days for the club fair, September 24th, Leadership, after a lot of consideration decided to cancel this school wide event. 

“Leadership kids worked really hard to set up the club fair so looking at the fact that there were minimal amount of clubs [out of the ones who signed up] actually showing up, we decided to cancel it. Due to high heat and low participation, there was no other choice,” said ASB Vice-President, Megan Sloan (‘21).

Pigskin, one of the largest annual traditions at Amador, happened to take place just three days before the club fair. A couple issues, including miscommunications between AV Boosters and ASB made it difficult to recover in time for the next club event. 

“There were a couple issues during Pigskin. The biggest was the mix up between ASB and AV Boosters and how some of the clubs signed up to sell things in one program and not the other, causing some clubs to double up in what they were selling. For example, there were several booths selling boba and we generally try to avoid this from happening,” said Sloan. 

In addition, some club members who decided to sell food at Pigskin did not have a food handler’s license, making it unsafe for them to sell any edible items. This is an issue that can be avoided by taking a short online class to become food handler certified. Even though this may take time out of club member’s day, it keeps the students and our school a safer place.  

“The food handler license, that was something that came up at pigskin, and that’s just to protect the people that you were serving, and a lot of clubs didn’t have that, and that was a little bit of a problem. But we are looking forward to improving our communication in the future as well as making sure people are safe,” said Sloan. 

When clubs sell things at school, especially food items, it takes away money that the cafeteria earns every day from food sales. This is one of the reasons why it is becoming increasingly difficult to get a signature to get cleared to sell from the nutritionists at school. 

“If you’re selling food, you are technically competing with the child nutrition services, which is in the cafeteria, so that’s why clubs have to get the signatures. It actually deducts from the child nutrition services cafeteria profits,” said Sloan.

“Last year, before Donversity, it was really difficult to get the nutritionist’s signature at school, however, we solved the problem by buying cookies from the nutritionists. We bought 50 chocolate chip cookies from the nutritionists themselves and then sold those to the students, so it helped the both of us out,” said Vikranth Keerthipati (‘20). 

The club fair this year was going to take place at the quad near the senior section. However, this location does not benefit the freshmen and underclassmen at all. The point of club fairs is to raise awareness to the freshmen and encourage them to participate in clubs. There are also several online resources that are available to help students find clubs, including the “Clubs” section in the drop down menu under “Activities and Athletics” on the Amador Valley High website.

“We are looking into finding the funds for a generator because the main reason we don’t do stuff out in front of the freshman crowd is just because the lack of power,” said Sloan. 

Leadership has been trying their best to work through these issues and ensure that everyone at Amador has a safe and enjoyable time interacting with clubs during these type of events.