Schools should not be exempt from this revenue-generating enterprise.In a community outside Salt Lake City, school buses sport banners promoting businesses. At high school football games in Winter Park, Florida, the play-by-play announcer slips in pitches for Powerade. And in a suburban Denver District, elementary school report cards include paid advertising. Cash-strapped school districts have begun to relax restrictions on commercial messages, aiming to shore up their dwindling resources. In exchange for what usually amounts to a cut of 40% of the profits, the company lures potential advertisers with a diverse menu of placements: on buses, textbook covers, in-school television monitors, scoreboards, and Web sites. He said that after initial concerns about “bombarding kids with advertising,” he had not received any complaints from the public. Because of where the ads are placed on the bus, he said, many students do not pay attention to them, and when students do notice, they like them. In Humble, where Ms. Calvert’s company is based, she estimated that the total advertising sales since 2007 for the district had exceeded $1
Schools should not be exempt from this revenue-generating enterprise.In a community outside Salt Lake City, school buses sport banners promoting businesses. At high school football games in Winter Park, Florida, the play-by-play announcer slips in pitches for Powerade. And in a suburban Denver District, elementary school report cards include paid advertising. Cash-strapped school districts have begun to relax restrictions on commercial messages, aiming to shore up their dwindling resources. In exchange for what usually amounts to a cut of 40% of the profits, the company lures potential advertisers with a diverse menu of placements: on buses, textbook covers, in-school television monitors, scoreboards, and Web sites. He said that after initial concerns about “bombarding kids with advertising,” he had not received any complaints from the public. Because of where the ads are placed on the bus, he said, many students do not pay attention to them, and when students do notice, they like them. In Humble, where Ms. Calvert’s company is based, she estimated that the total advertising sales since 2007 for the district had exceeded $1