Monday, February 27, 2023

Vendor Feature: Flaghouse

Flaghouse is pleased to partner with AEA Purchasing to provide portable air purification systems, in support of healthy classrooms and institutional environments.

Contract pricing for Iowa schools can be found here. Be sure to reference bid #AEPA 2020 on all correspondence to insure special pricing.

For additional product information and contract quotes, contact:

Flaghouse
Daniel Ficca
Sales Consultant
800-265-6900 EXT 4765
dficca@flaghouse.com
@FlaghouseInc

*Coming soon...Flaghouse was recently awarded a contract with AEA Purchasing for school supplies and athletic/PE equipment. Keep your eyes on our website for full details! For immediate questions, please email Joni.

Wednesday, February 22, 2023

February Highlights from AEA Purchasing

Here's an update on items of interest from AEA Purchasing.  Please share! 

National Breakfast Week
National School Breakfast Week is coming March 6-10, 2023! Schools across the country will use this time to celebrate the importance of school breakfast and its impact on student health and learning. Did you know that almost 2.4 million school breakfasts were served throughout Iowa in 2022*? Check out our blog post which contains more resources and ten unique breakfast recipes/ideas celebrating this year's construction theme of "DIG INto School Breakfast."  *(source: USDA FY 2022 Data)  

Technology Program Update
Great things are happening within our Technology purchasing program. Click here to learn more.

Athletics & PE Supplies
Our Athletics & PE program covers everything your school might need to support your PE and extra-curricular programs. Click here to learn more.

Vendor Promotions
Click here to gain access to a shared Google Folder with fliers and brochures from our vendor partners.

If you have any questions about how AEA Purchasing can be of service to you, please reach out to us! We'd love to help.

Tuesday, February 21, 2023

Making the Most of Mardi Gras in the Cafeteria!

Mardi Gras is a fun opportunity to bring a carnival celebration to your cafeteria.  Parade your customers through a New Orleans-inspired menu and a salad bar filled with gold, purple, and green fruits and vegetables. Thank you to our market basket brokers for providing the inspiring information below to help make your Fat Tuesday a winner!

               


Can you really celebrate Mardi Gras without Dirty Rice or Jambalaya? 

H
ormel Foods provided a Pork Carnita Jambalaya recipe using Market Basket favorites like Hormel Boneless FF Ham and Hormel Pork Carnitas blended with spices, veggies, and rice. We can almost smell the deliciousness! 


Tyson shared a center of the plate Chicken & Dirty Rice Culinary Creation!  Cajun Blackening Seasoning to get the celebration started using Market Basket Breaded Chicken Drumstick and Hillshire Farms Beef Crumbles. Who’s getting “dirty” in their cafeteria? 

Step Out of the Ordinary!

Explore a new unique dish during your celebration!  RICH’S is starting the idea of a New Orleans-inspired favorite using Market Basket Proof ‘N Bake Pizza Dough to create a Mile High Muffuletta using your customer's favorite cold cuts.


This Tyson Nola Loaded Burger reminds us sometimes it is all about the EXTRAS!  Introduce your customers to “Remoulade Sauce” created with Greek yogurt, tomato paste, and spicy cajun seasonings! Tyson offered additional Market Basket items that would pair well with a side of remoulade including the Tyson Breaded or Grilled Chicken Filet, Bosco Cheese Sticks, or the State Fair Chicken Chili Cristpito!

Cook Up the Cajun!

Bring on the color with this festive Land O Lakes Spicy Cajun Chicken and Pasta using Market Basket Ultimate Creamy White Cheese sauce and whole grain pasta. Jazz up this cheesy dish with Mardi Gras-inspired purple, green, and gold veggies for the WIN! 

What is a Mardi Gras Celebration without a King Cake?

Fat Tuesday is the final hoorah for Mardi Gras, so why not celebrate with a sweet!  RICH’s shared this Fruity Cobblestone Muffin offering 2G and a 1/4c fruit per serving!

                        Lunchroom Party Favors!

Serving these fun Mardi Gras-inspired creations in an eye-catching container will take your celebration to a whole new level!  Consider Market Basket Huhtamaki Red Plaid Food Trays, Fiber Lunch Trays, or fun White Paper Cups!


Using the Market Basket!

A few extras shared by Tyson will be Mardi Gras and everyday favorites…  Spicy Buffalo Po’Boy, Ultimate Rajun Cajun Soup, and a Blackened Chicken Sandwich



Having trouble navigating the market basket or finding new pairings to build a creditable breakfast, lunch, or snack? Our food consultants are always here to assist, reach out at any time, always here to help. Not an AEA Purchasing Cooperative Food Member?  We would love the opportunity to talk, email megan@aeapurchasing.org.

Spotlighting our members on AEA Purchasing social platforms is our favorite, please share your Mardi Gras photos and stories with us!


Monday, February 20, 2023

Vendor Profile: ClassLink

Looking for single-sign on options for your students and staff? Consider solutions from ClassLink!

ClassLink is a global education provider of access and analytics products that create more time for learning and help schools better understand digital engagement. As leading advocates for open data standards, we offer instant access to apps and files with single sign-on, streamline class rostering, automate account provisioning, and provide actionable analytics. ClassLink empowers 18 million students and staff in over 2,400 school systems. Visit www.classlink.com to learn more.

Interested in seeing a demo? Educators may request a demonstration of ClassLink at www.classlink.com/demo. AEA Purchasing has negotiated special pricing for Iowa schools. For more information, please contact:

Gail Dinkelkamp
Director of Inside Sales 
(862) 414-4819
*Reference AEA Purchasing to receive contract pricing!

Wednesday, February 15, 2023

Program Feature: Athletics & PE

Our Athletics & PE program covers everything your school might need to support your PE and extra-curricular programs.

Click on a vendor name to learn more!

Athletic, PE, and Field Equipment
Sportime (A School Specialty company)

Scoreboards

    Sports Medicine
    Sportime

Monday, February 13, 2023

Vendor Profile: Camcor

Camcor is an AEA Purchasing vendor partner participating in our Statewide Technology Buy.


Benefits of the contract include:
  • Catalog Discounts 
  • Volume based discounts
  • Free standard ground shipping for orders over $25
For information on how you can save on your next STEM/STEAM, computer and other tech purchases, consider Camcor! Connect with:

Camcor
Carrie White
800-868-2462 x 155
Bid Reference: STB2022AEAPURCH

Happy saving!



Tuesday, February 7, 2023

DIG INto School Breakfast

National School Breakfast Week (NSBW) is coming soon -- March 6-10, 2023 -- with a construction theme of "DIG INto School Breakfast." How are you planning to celebrate school breakfast and its many important factors, such as providing energy for the day, controlling weight, and improving focus in the classroom? We would love to know how your plans are going and would appreciate it even more if you shared pictures and stories of your National School Breakfast Week celebrations. Please send any images or stories to Barb@aeapurchasing.org, and with your permission, we will share them on our social media platforms. 

If you are struggling to find ways to celebrate during NSBW, we have compiled a list of online resources below with many great opportunities to get kids, staff, and the community involved in your program.  Along with these resources, we have developed ten new and unique construction-themed "quantity" recipes meeting child nutrition meal patterns, and entirely ready for standardization within your program. 

Have you had the opportunity to learn about USDA's recipe standardization process? A new recipe standardization guide was published this past year by the Institute of Child Nutrition (ICN) in conjunction with USDA and Team Nutrition. It is a comprehensive guide to what it takes to standardize a recipe. Along with the guide, ICN hosted a webinar detailing the process, and you can view the webinar by clicking on this link

USDA defines a standardized recipe as the following, "one that has been tried, adapted, and retried at least three times and has been found to produce the same good results and yield every time when the exact procedures are used with the same type of equipment and the same quantity and quality of ingredients."

 A quantity recipe is defined as "any recipe that produces 25 servings or more. However, quantity recipes are not standardized until they have been prepared at least three times with consistent results."


National School Breakfast Week Resources
School Nutrition Association - offering many ways on how your school can celebrate NSBW, including high-quality marketing materials for purchase from the Jim Coleman Store. 

102 Ways to Celebrate NSBW - Buying School Food is a website created by Kristen Nauss, School Nutrition Director based out of Chattanooga, TN. She offers an amazing list of ideas that you will surely find can fit into your program's celebration.

Food Research & Action Center (FRAC) - are you looking for studies and facts about school breakfast to help you promote it throughout your community? Check out FRAC's wide array of school breakfast resources, including the history of school breakfast and research on the benefits of school breakfast. 

Action for Healthy Kids - a non-profit dedicated to connecting communities and schools all the while promoting healthy habits. Find great ideas on how to celebrate NSBW along with how to better connect with your community. 

Iowa Department of Education (IDOE) - take a look at the great Team Nutrition and USDA resources in the IDOE's latest news blog about NSBW. 

"DIG INto School Breakfast" Themed Recipes
NSBW is a week to go above and beyond in your breakfast offerings. Adding new or fun-named breakfast options this week is a great way to get kids and staff excited about breakfast.

  • The "Lumber Yard" Banana Split - using Dutch waffle sticks, build a lumber yard on the trays of your students, then top it with yogurt fluff, bananas, and fresh berries for an extra special treat. 
  • Deconstructed Mini Breakfast Tacos -  Yummy salsa poached eggs, bacon, and queso cheese sauce piled next to mini flatbreads for kids to "construct" their own mini tacos. Includes optional garnishes of avocado and cilantro. 
  • "Bulldozer" Tot Bowls - next time you are cooking up some tater tots, take a look at them, don't they look like little bulldozers? LOL, Ok, that may be a stretch, but watch your kids bulldoze through these tater tots covered in country sausage gravy, eggs, and cheddar cheese.
  • "Front Loader" Potato Skins - a play on "loaded" potato skins topped with USDA eggs, sausage links, melted cheese blend, and garnished with sour cream drizzle and sliced green onions. 
  • "Cement Mixers" is not a recipe but an idea to build your own Yogurt Parfait Bar. Call your yogurt choices "cement" and provide a wide array of "mixers" that kids can mix into and enjoy. The toppings can include homemade granola, cereals, graham cookies or crackers, crumbled muffins/donuts, and plenty of fresh or canned fruits. 
  • Egg in a Hole (Bagel) Breakfast Sandwich - This special dish was adapted from a recipe developed for and served to Iowa lawmakers for the School Nutrition Association of Iowa's Legislative Breakfast, held February 7, 2023, at the Iowa State Capitol. Give it a special name like "Nailed It" or "Hit the Nail on the Head." You do not even need to rename this one, knowing it will soon become a student favorite with its layers of yumminess. 
We hope you have the opportunity to try out one or many of these new quantity recipes. If you are interested in standardizing these for your operation, need the meal pattern crediting adjusted, or want a different yield to fit your serving needs, please never hesitate to reach out. The AEA Purchasing Food team is always willing to help. 

Cheers to a yummy and successful National School Breakfast Week! 

Monday, February 6, 2023

How Proactive Asset Management Can Maximize Your Building Life Cycles

When it comes to managing your roofing and building envelope assets, you shouldn’t “expect the unexpected” – you can plan for it. 

Here’s an all-too-common scenario: leaking roofs are the first indication of a problem, and by the time the cause is discovered, warranties have lapsed, and the only option is an expensive, total roof replacement. Letting roofs “run to failure” is costly, disruptive, and can be avoided by taking a proactive “asset management” approach. 

Being truly proactive is about continually monitoring your roofs and building envelopes, consistently conducting inspections/diagnostics/ maintenance, and then doing restoration projects before replacement is the only option. And that’s where significant cost savings lie – especially when it comes to your roofs. Roof replacements cost significantly more than roof restoration. And roof replacement projects have greater disruptions, longer project cycle times, and higher labor and material costs, not to mention negative environmental impact and landfill waste.

The following graphic illustrates the difference between the traditional approach versus what we call the “ManagedAssets” approach:
















By investing in proactive maintenance, on a scheduled basis, you can avoid the cycle of unplanned leaks and repairs. Whether you have one or many facilities to manage, keeping abreast of maintenance issues alone can be daunting. That’s why AEA awarded vendor Tremco Roofing and Building Maintenance and affiliated construction services company Weatherproofing Technologies, Inc. (WTI) offer a unique single-source program to manage your roofing assets for you, long-term. Ultimately, you’ll save money by addressing urgent issues before they necessitate costly replacements. Proper inspections, maintenance, and restoration can, over time, significantly lower your dollars spent per square foot per year. Say you have 20 buildings totaling one million square feet of roofing. If 40% of that inventory is restorable, that'd be 400,000 square feet. At an approximate savings of $15 per square foot with restoration over replacements, you're looking at a savings of $6 million. 

The patented three-part program provides expert inventory assessment, prioritized construction, and scheduled maintenance so you know what you have, spend your money wisely, and keep your roofs and building envelopes operational for as long as possible. Here’s how it works.

Maximum Performance: Plan for it

Step 1: Know what you have. 
Experts from WTI inspect structural components and underlying conditions, then program their findings into OLI, our comprehensive On-Line Information tool. This may include CAD drawings, specifications, budget plans, recommendations, and more – everything you need for an accurate picture of your roofing inventory that you can use to create plans.  

- Number of roofs; retrofits
- Types of roofs and manufacturers, flashing and insulation
- Number and types of penetrations
- Age of roofs
- Conditions of roofs, priority needs
- Warranties and specifications by roof level
- Diagnostics and findings

Step 2. Prioritize what you have. 
By ranking your roofs and other building envelope components by their condition and degree of deterioration, you can prioritize necessary projects and decide where and when to allocate resources.  Depending upon your needs and budget, your plan may combine maintenance, repairs, restoration, and replacement, eliminating leak repairs as well as costly unplanned system replacements.

- Maintain the good
- Restore the marginal
- Replace only when failed
- Build a 10-20 Year Plan














3. Protect what you have.
With turnkey, single-source post-construction services for your entire building envelope, Tremco enables you to keep your building envelope watertight for a fixed term and at a fixed price by performing these services on a defined schedule. We’ll do this through:

- Performance Warranties – review existing and eligibility of renewals 
- Proactive Preventive Maintenance

“Planning for it” and being proactive about maintenance can be a game changer for your facility management expenditures. To learn more, please contact Jake Hill at jhill@tremcoinc.com or Jeremy Yoder at jyoder@tremcoinc.com or call the Des Moines office at 515.208.4241. You may also visit yourroofexperts.com

As a manufacturer of roofing materials since 1928, Tremco Roofing and Building Maintenance offers a breadth and depth of roofing systems for every environment, and the technical know-how to solve our customers’ biggest problems. And because our affiliated construction services company WTI offers turnkey maintenance, repair, roof management, and general contracting services for the entire building envelope, we have the unique ability to provide a total solution to maximize building performance and our customers’ return on investment. Tremco Roofing and WTI are part of Tremco Construction Products Group. Tremco Roofing/WTI solutions are available through the AEA Cooperative Contract for speed, quality, and compliance. Reference bid # AEPA IFB 021-D.

Friday, February 3, 2023

February Vendor Promos

Have you checked out the latest info and specials from our vendor partners?

What are you waiting for? 

Check out our February vendor promotions today! 

Content is added throughout the month. 

Wednesday, February 1, 2023

Technology News

Great things are happening within our Technology purchasing program. Here's what's up:

The Statewide Technology Buy contracts were renewed in January and will be in place through December 31, 2023. These contracts include the following vendors and products:

Catalog Discount

  • Lightspeed Technologies - 22% off entire catalog
  • Camcor, Inc.- 3% off entire catalog
  • Scott Electric - 5% off lamps – includes bulbs in aftermarket cages & also original lamps
  • ACCO Brands USA, LLC -  40% off catalog
  • JourneyEd.com, Inc - 6% off entire technology catalog

Batteries-Duracell

  • Innovative Office Supplies - Batteries, varying sizes

Computers & Accessories

  • JourneyEd - Hardware & Software
  • Innovative Office Supplies - Presentation Remote
  • Innovative Office Supplies - Digital Storage

Document Cameras

  • Midwest Computer Products - Elmo Models
  • ACCO/GBC - Discovery 1100

Generic Office Supplies

  • Innovative Office Supplies - Sanford Brand Markers
  • Innovative Office Supplies - Universal 3-ring binders & Fellows binding combs
  • Innovative Office Supplies - Digital Storage
*Contract pricing on additional office supplies is available through Quill.com and School Specialty. Both vendors have a HUGE catalog of essentials to meet your needs.

Interactive Touchscreens & Accessories

  • Midwest Computer Products -.BENQ Models
  • Midwest Computer Products - Boxlight ProColor Models

Lamination Equipment and Film

  • ACCO/GBC - GBC Laminator Models & Film
  • Scott Electric - Hop Brand Film

Lamps-Projector replacement

  • Scott Electric & Midwest Computer Products

Projectors

  • Midwest Computer Products - Epson Models

Screens

  • Midwest Computer Products - 25% off Da-Lite Screens

Software Products

  • JourneyEd - Adobe, Microsoft, Nuance, Sophos, Symantec, TechSmith, VM Ware & More

For a complete list of technology vendors and products available through AEA Purchasing, click here. Got questions? Contact laurie@aeapurchasing.org for more information.