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To Balance Budgets, Philadelphia Schools Allow Ads
Without ever cracking a book, students in Bucks County's Pennsbury School District are learning a new subject this year: marketing.
At Manor Elementary School in the Pennsbury District, principal Christopher Becker (right) and district Assistant Superintendent W. David Bowman talk in front of an ad. In what administrators say is a first in the Philadelphia area and probably the state, the Pennsbury school board signed a contract with a national advertising agency that could boost the district's battered budget by as much as $424,000, while giving the firm's clients access to the habitat of 10,950 children, tweens, and teens. (AKIRA SUWA / Staff Photographer) Starting three weeks ago, the 16 elementary, middle, and high schools are being adorned with - some say defiled by - advertisements as large as 5 by 10 feet. By month's end, 47 should be in place. Ultimately, 218 are to appear on walls and floors, and shrink-wrapped over lockers, locker-room benches, even cafeteria tables.
In what administrators say is a first in the Philadelphia area and probably the state, the Pennsbury school board signed a contract with a national advertising agency that could boost the district's battered budget by as much as $424,000, while giving the firm's clients access to the habitat of 10,950 children, tweens, and teens.
The ads must relate to health, education, nutrition, or student safety, and may not directly endorse products. They tout, among other things, reading and outdoor activities (the U.S. Library of Congress and the Ad Council); organizational skills (Post-it Notes), and concussion awareness (Dick's Sporting Goods).
They have debuted to love-'em/hate-'em reviews from students and parents. But to district officials - who cut the budget this year by $3 million and dipped into savings for a additional $3.1 million - they are a bow to necessity.
"It's imperative we find alternate means to preserve our programs," Assistant Superintendent W. David Bowman said. "We'd prefer to generate revenues rather than cut programs or increase class size" - or raise taxes, which Pennsbury did not.
Although such commercial deals are rare in public education, the brutal economy is making them less so.
New Jersey is allowing school districts to put ads on on the outside of school buses for the first time. Regulations are being finalized, and the ads should go up next year.
Janet Miller, chief operating officer for School Media Inc., the Minneapolis-based agency that signed Pennsbury, said the deals are win-win. Schools get cash through less incendiary means than tax hikes, and "corporate leaders [get] a chance to stand up" and contribute to education, she said. "It's America helping America."
School Media has contracts for ads in nine other districts in Minnesota and California, according to Miller.
In Orange County, Fla., the schools make several hundred thousand dollars a year allowing ads on such platforms as lunch menus and the vests of sideline officials at football games, and licensing debit cards with the district's logo.
The Los Angeles School District last year approved a corporate naming-rights plan that could bring in an estimated $18 million. And this past summer, the San Juan Unified School District, also in California, approved the posting of corporate signs on middle and high school campuses, and hired an advertising firm to go out and get them.
In recent years, "there has been an enormous increase both in the amount and the sophistication" of commercial ventures in schools, said Tim Kasser, a psychology professor at Knox College in Illinois who has written extensively on ads in academe. "It's gone far beyond just saying 'Coca Cola' on the scoreboard."
Even if ads present innocuous public-service and social-issue messages, "a lot of companies see that they can make money off this," Kasser said. "Advertising works through the repetition of images and messages. The more places you can saturate, the more it gets into the brain."
Paul Kurnit, a marketing professor at Pace University in New York, was once a youth marketing executive, giving his concerns a certain gravitas.
"The school is a fallow playground for advertising brands to reach kids in an authoritative, credible environment where there's an implied endorsement [by] the authorities," he said.
Kurnit expressed doubts about "how well schools will be able to draw the line" between educational messages and in-your-face advertising. "We've got to be worried about product creep."
Not all experts agree. If the ads are "selective and thoughtful," they can be a "good thing" for children, said Lane Keller, a professor of marketing at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. "The key is to keep people well-informed about the benefits and the costs."
The Pennsbury deal did not coalesce behind the public's back. It took shape after the school board, vowing to contain costs and taxes, appointed a revenue development committee last year to come up with nontraditional money streams. Ideas were solicited from district employees and residents and reported at the board's public meetings.
The district can veto ad content and placement.
While Pennsbury jumped on the ad wagon, other districts are finding other ways to mine commerce for cash.
The Centennial system, also in Bucks, has launched a host of ventures aimed at raising $2.5 million by June 2014.
Centennial trademarked the William Tennent High School name and its panther mascot's image, and signed a licensing agreement with Modell's Sporting Goods. Board member Mark Miller, himself a marketing consultant, said Internet companies often sell apparel bearing school logos, without paying fees. With its trademark, Centennial can curb that.
This fall, licensed T-shirts went on sale at Modell's in Warminster, with athletic bags to follow. The district gets a 20 percent cut. Schools also circulate Modell's discount coupons, for a percentage of sales, and Modell's signs are in the high school stadium and gymnasium.
Want to be noticed at a one- or two-day Centennial event? Sponsoring the "Your-Name-Here Invitational" is $5,000; an "Invitational Presented by Your-Name-Here" is $3,000.
That's not all: State Farm Insurance pays Centennial $5,000 to put a sign on the high school stadium ticket booth and set up tables at games, as well as inside the school, to sell policies. A local auto dealership donated a pickup truck with accessories, worth $35,000, for the right to display advertising on it. Ford is holding vehicle test drives on school grounds; the district gets $20 for each participant. And a credit union opened inside the high school in return for helping school business classes and hiring student interns.
This year, Centennial raised taxes more than 4.6 percent and cut 28 jobs. Nonetheless, school board member Jane Schrader Lynch voted against the Modell's deal.
"I don't want to commercialize schools; some of these arrangements are doing that," she said. "The focus should be on education. To me, it's not worth the money."
In Chester County's Unionville-Chadds Ford district, board member Holly Manzone noted the public divide over how far is too far to go in monetizing the schoolhouse. The board, she said, is proceeding cautiously.
"Personally, I'm troubled by" placing ads in schools, she said. "These kids are a captive audience. . . . An ad isn't going to be valuable unless it somehow registers, and I don't want them to register with the children."
At Pennsbury's Manor Elementary School this month, a pro-reading ad featuring cartoon characters from the movie Tangled and one promoting outdoor activity over video gaming were greeted with parental enthusiasm.
Crystal Schaefer, whose daughter is a student there, said they were "positive reminders" for children. And "it's great if it [brings in] revenue for the district."
At a high school back-to-school night, Jean Sharp, mother of three, expressed reservations. Students "are bombarded with so much information as it is," she said. "To have more clutter during their every-day passing to classes may be too much."
East High senior Jon Shiota didn't like the idea. "School is an educational space," he said. "I don't think it's somewhere where they should be advertising products."
Pennsbury board member Allan Weisel was blunt about the alternative. "The less money we have, the more educational programs we have to cut, and $425,000 buys a lot of program," he said.
"We say, 'Show us another way, give us the funding some other way.' We need the money desperately."
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33 Comments so far
Show AllI respectfully request Occupy Philadelphia tear these down. When School Administrators are for sale to the highest bidder, it makes them madams, and the Schoolhouse becomes training for a Whorehouse.
Well, who in the world would oppose advertising in schools? They're mills for corporations, aren't they? Maybe they should put corporate ownership signage on the outside of all of them. We could call this "truth in advertising".
And our children are little consumer-bots, anyway, right? With these "positive reminders", they'll be just that much further along their little life journey. Allows them to know early that no place and no space and no time in their life is sacrosanct from marketing and materialism. Fits together pretty well, in my opinion.
can you hear the echo? i'm scaping bottom...lots of gunk down here..ere...er.e. ... my, that light looks good up there
just 2 more werdz hom skol
>>"...the Pennsbury school board signed a contract with a national advertising agency that could boost the district's battered budget by as much as $424,000, while giving the firm's clients access to the habitat of 10,950 children, tweens, and teens."<<
Something is VERY WRONG about this whole thing. Subjecting 11,000 students to a barrage of advertisements in a learning environment for the sake of some 400 odd thousand bucks is sad. I think if people were to rise up, they can put an end to this.
Pennsbury school board is in Bucks County, with a population of over 600,000. So there must be other ways of raising this money, no matter how bad the economy is.
Just look at the logic: advertisers will give that money in exchange for advertising space. And why do they advertise? Because they expect to sell stuff to the students. And the students or their parents will have to spend MONEY to buy that stuff. So, the money to buy stuff is already there, apparently. Corporations wouldn't be advertising if it weren't. So the people just need to find a few extra bucks somehow, to say no to advertising in schools. Or increase corporate taxes. We are not even talking of stopping the wars. But the bottom-line is that the money is there. People just need to find a way to make it flow in the right direction.
Don't Year Books already have ads? What's the difference?
Students are not "exposed" to the Year Books day in and day out. I would think it's important to have ONE PLACE for a few hours a day where the students are not exposed to ads. And putting ads in school hallways is not just "exposing" the students to ads, it is "subjecting" the students to aggressive, in-your-face messaging, with the obvious idea of relieving them of some of their cash at a later point in time.
it's still selling out
OK, I see what you mean. However, a "Year Book", strictly speaking, is not part of the learning process. It is, in a sense, a privilege, a luxury, and optional. But still, ideally, it should be without ads, I agree.
I'm sure things have changed in the almost forty years that have elapsed since my own high school daze.But in that prehistoric era, yearbooks and activities, e.g. theatrical productions and such, were sponsored by local businesses, often ones in which parents or alumni had an interest.I think there's more than just a difference in degree between having, say, a local sporting goods store or insurance company as sponsors versus a corporate sporting goods chain or insurance corporation forming a long-term, contractual business relationship with a school.YMMV, but programs with one-shot retail ads from "Joe's Tire Store" seem more tolerable and less offensive, even if Joe is just a pawn in Goodyear or Michelin's multinational game. But the wholesale, draconian corporate relationships are creepy and grotesque.But this encroaching corporate presence has been going on for decades. What about "Channel One" pseudo-educational teevee, and various schemes by beverage corporations to have exclusive vending rights in schools? Only the countervailing nanny-state push to limit cafeteria food to distilled water and whole-grain crackers have thwarted that strategy.All that said, it's both sad and irritating that complacent and thoroughly indoctrinated adults readily buy into the premise that universally commodifying every aspect of educational institutions is a win-win situation.It may be specious to suggest that schools have "souls", but one would think that parents and school authorities would resist the bean-counters on the grounds that this approach is the equivalent of selling one's "school spirit" to the devil.
What next? Koch machines and cigarettes?
This country is rapidly becoming nothing more than a gigantic corporate brothel.
As Celine said in "Journey to the End of the Night", there's no escaping American commercialism.
When my daughter was in eleventh grade in a public high school, she planned to spend her senior year in a school in another country. She called the school and asked them to let her take extra classes before she left to be sure she would have enough credits to graduate. They refused. As soon as she hung up the phone, I told her to quit the school, which she promptly did. We found a local independent school where she could take all the required courses. She got her senior year overseas and graduated on time.
What kind of high school prohibits students from doing extra work to achieve their goals? Answer: an American public school.
Stunning to read about the school’s myopic treatment of your daughter... Industrial cookie cutter thinking, even with once-in-a-lifetime opportunities. (Nice job on taking charge in the matter, too.)
Here’s a link you might like. The speaker is a British educational reformer who “gets it.” The video is 18 minutes and leisurely in pace, but pleasantly witty and worth the trip. (And his light as a feather style pays off with occassional sledgehammer points.) http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html
Thanks for the link. I bookmarked it to watch later when I have a little more time.
I watched the video you mentioned. I agree with Ken Robinson in general regarding the lack of respect that school systems show for the arts. There's actually also a general lack of respect for mathematics except insofar as it serves technology. Mr. Robinson correctly points out that we teach all students mathematics, but in my experience, schools do not often convey the true nature and value of mathematical thought to students (an admittedly difficult thing to do). But that's another topic.
schools must go...they are not good...
No, no. Schools--at least some schools--still have art classes. Art classes have creative students with a desire to create art, art supplies, and a need for canvases. What better combination than a wall that desperately needs paint, people who want to do some art and art supplies just begging to be used?
"Pennsbury board member Allan Weisel was blunt about the alternative. "The less money we have, the more educational programs we have to cut, and $425,000 buys a lot of program," he said."
Well, these dirty money big boys sure have their heads in the "real world", don't they? It's all about the benjamins, and be damned where they come from, just as long as they arrive. Of course, nothing makes them arrive better than good old American capitalism, in their world view.
"Janet Miller, chief operating officer for School Media Inc., the Minneapolis-based agency that signed Pennsbury, said the deals are win-win. Schools get cash through less incendiary means than tax hikes, and "corporate leaders [get] a chance to stand up" and contribute to education, she said. "It's America helping America.""
America helping America! Hey, that's a great slogan, like something a PR twit would think up!
How about the corporate leaders "stand up" by paying higher fucking taxes and paying their workers with good wages and benefits?
These schools must already be completely camera-fied.
Otherwise, these gigantic ads would simply be graffiti zones the corporations would ultimately regret ever placing in the schools.
Perhaps parents too can make money by permitting advertisers to shit into the minds of their children. How much can I earn by having a Coca Cola sign in my living room?
Lets see, whats it been, about 20 years ago all the lottery companies sold the states on allowing lotteries by promising millions to the school systems in the state. Whats happened to all those lotto milions? Funny how the school board members and superintendents are all making 6 figure incomes, but lets cut programs not school board members??? These parasites nave funneled away the lotto millions, you don,t even hear about them anymore. Lets start taking a closer look at our school boards as well as superintendents. How many members do we really need? And does it take someone who makes a 6 figure income to be on the board? AND WHERE IN THE HELL ARE THE LOTTO MILLIONS?
And why not "No recess until all the windows are washed"? That will save on janitors. 400 kids cleaning windows will get them done right quick and they are learning a "career" at the same time.
I like the idea of tattooing the students with corporate logos ..................................right after there's no space left on the bodies of school administrators. It's win win for everyone.
Awhhh c'mon, it could be worse.
You could have photos of the current president of the USA beaming down upon you with a gormless grin, or some crosses hung about everywhere or paintings of some mythical deity, or textbooks full of legends & myths of noahs ark and jesus getting saddlesore from all that dinosaur riding he did.
Or it could be so worse that there's a flapping piece of colourful material hung on a pole and everyone has to sing a silly half-song to it and pledge unthinking and unwavering allegiance to it.
Oh wait.....
Oh, this is very bad! The military now has competition for the hearts and minds of the kids in our schools! Besides, what is worse, selling your ass or soul for capitalism? The kids aren't even given a choice in the matter!
Yes, its very much like prostitution. Corporations pay to shit in your child's mind.
Crude but correct..
The gang of 400 are determined to make sure that all of the rest of us "Owe our souls to the company store." And in the meantime sell the kids products to rot their teeth, food to make them unable to think clearly, and of course, as always, take every dime they have.
Let's be honest with ourselves folks. Every dollar spent on advertising is added to and factored into the cost of the product or service being advertised. For that 400,000.00 the schools are receiving those companies will be seeing a much higher return. I am sure some enterprising investigative journalist can come up with the projected return expected by the companies purchasing advertising space in these schools. I am sure many marketing studies have been done on their projected results.
The only people that talk of taxes should set fire to are consumers and ordinary working people that always pay more to offset the cuts handed out. Are school budgets are being cut time and time again to offset tax loopholes and cuts for corporations. Why we are all not "Drum Majors" for taxes on the high and the mighty is a mystery to me.
The cancerous growth of pathological behaviors...
Why not rent your bed room for corporate advertizing?
Don’t Blame the Schools!
Blame the Voters that won’t elect politicians to change the tax system to make it fair and the Educators that won’t improve productivity and reduce the cost of our education system.
On average it cost the taxpayers over $150,000 to provide a high school education to an individual student. $105,000 of that goes to pay salaries and benefits. That is $202,000 dollars a year spent on salaries and benefits for a class of 25.
Owners need educated people for their businesses so they benefit greatly from these expenditures. But 50% of education funding comes from property taxes (excluding stocks and bonds) which is a very regressive tax.
The effective property tax rate for the bottom 20% is 11.2%of income.
The effective property tax rate for the bottom 80% is 5.1% of income.
The effective property tax rate for the top 20% is 2.3% of income.
Schools are here to'educate' our children NOT to make them slaves to corporations.
This is pervasive, obcene, abdication of our responsibility to our children...
Totally wrong!
What an opportunity for advertisers! All of those impressionable minds! And the context - a school - makes the information seem informative.
Remind me to buy stock in those corporations (but not the children who will graduate from that school).