by Brandi Hartsell
Scot Smith, VSBA co-chair, released information on VSBA voting for this year (see below). If you have any questions, please contact Scot or Pat Bashir via email. You can find their contact information on the VSBA page.
After much deliberation, we have decided to move forward with voting for the 2019-2020 Volunteer State Book Award. Our goal is to encourage as much participation as possible under the current circumstances. We have moved the deadline for the submission of ballots to Wednesday, May 27. Since we realize that every district–and indeed every school–is handling this situation differently, we would like to offer these guidelines for collecting votes from students.
- For schools that are one-to-one or where most students have a device and Internet access at home: Librarians and/or teachers can reach out to students via email Canvas or email. Students can complete an online survey in Canvas, Google doc, or Microsoft Word. The librarian will tally the student votes and submit them on the Google doc that is on the VSBA page. We do not want students to vote using the official VSBA ballots.
- For schools where librarians can easily contact their students: Librarians reach out to students in whatever way possible, collect votes, and submit them online.
- For schools where librarians cannot easily contact their students: Librarians reach out to classroom teachers who contact the students. Students submit their votes to the teacher and the teacher forwards that information to the librarian who then tallies the votes and submits them online.
- For schools with collection days at the end of the scheduled school year: Librarians try to collect votes from students during “pick up & drop days” at their individual schools. Librarians tally the votes and then submit ballots. Please take the necessary precautions to remain safe.
- For schools where the public library in that district is open, students could vote at the local branch of the public library. If this is the case for your school, be sure to contact the public librarians in your district to let them know that students might be voting for the VSBA and to inform them of the voting procedures. The public librarian would then tally and submit the votes.
The ballots are located on the VSBA page at: https://www.tasltn.org/vsba
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