Serving Kids . . . Up to Marketers

With soft drink vending machines and fast-food logos sprouting in school hallways, cafeterias and sports arenas, one district has taken an unusual stand against galloping commercialism.

Declaring that San Francisco’s schoolchildren are not “for sale,” the city’s school board last month approved a trend-bucking policy seeking to limit commercial advertising and paid endorsements in the city’s public schools.

The measure is the strongest in the nation, where cash-strapped schools are adding another R--as in retailing--to their curriculum of readin’, writin’ and ‘rithmetic. Plagued by chronic underfunding for sports, arts programs and computers, schools across the land are turning to increasingly lucrative deals with soda producers and food marketers.

Schools generated an estimated $750 million in revenue from vending machines in 1997, according to the trade journal Vending Times.

“More and more schoolchildren are viewed as markets rather than as the future resource of the nation,” said Jill Wynns, a San Francisco Board of Education commissioner who wrote the city’s new policy. “It’s our responsibility to make it clear that schools are here to serve children, not commercial interests.”

Consumer advocates see the spreading commercialism as exploitation of a captive audience of impressionable youngsters. Exclusive contracts with vendors, they contend, could induce students to develop lifelong preferences--and not particularly healthful ones.

“It promotes a consumer mentality,” said Andrew Hagelshaw, senior program director of the Center for Commercial Free Public Education, a nonprofit group in Oakland. “There’s no denying there is a financial gain [for schools], but in the long run it costs more in terms of the nutritional choices they’re forcing on kids.”

Companies and school administrators counter that vending machines have been on school grounds for decades and that schools finally are benefiting from them.

For many schools, the funds generated are not small change. In Chula Vista, south of San Diego, the Sweetwater Union High School District last fall signed an exclusive Pepsi deal that will bring at least $4.45 million to the district’s 20 schools over the next 10 years. The money will pay for technology, library books, intramural sports, band and school-to-career programs.

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Amid this lively debate, commercialism in schools is becoming ever splashier. Consider:

* Dwight D. Eisenhower Elementary School in Garden Grove held an assembly last year for its General Mills fund-raiser; the students were exhorted to start collecting box tops from the cereal maker’s products and turn them in to bring in money for the school.

* The Laguna Beach schools switched this past year to a glossy, colorful lunch menu underwritten by food companies--and displaying their logos. An early edition of the “Monthly Munch” featured cartoon drawings of M&M; candies urging children to eat healthfully.

* In Henrico County, Va., schools have agreed to become franchisees for Subway, Taco Bell and Domino’s Pizza.

* The roof of a middle school in Grapevine, Tex., is adorned with a Dr. Pepper logo that can be seen by passing planes.

* Last September in Colorado Springs, Colo., a school district official who signed himself “The Coke Dude” sent a memo to principals, exhorting them to crank up sales of Coca-Cola products to meet a quota or risk losing revenue.

San Francisco’s Commercial Free Schools Act, which passed on a 5-2 vote, forbids any districtwide, exclusive contract with a soda or snack food company and requires that ongoing corporate sponsorships be approved by the school board. It also bars teachers from using textbooks or other lesson materials that include brand-name advertising.

Most districts have no process for reviewing in-school advertisements or corporate-sponsored educational materials.

The San Francisco policy was approved after it became known that school officials, without seeking public input, were considering an exclusive contract with Coca-Cola Co. Since the passage of the policy, the district has hired DD Marketing, a broker in Pueblo, Colo., to negotiate with a variety of soft drink companies on the schools’ behalf. Such nonexclusive contracts are typically not as lucrative.

Dan DeRose, president of DD Marketing, defends the idea of exclusive deals, which he continues to negotiate on behalf of dozens of other schools and districts.

The deals bring in more money for educating kids, he said, and, if pressed, most taxpayers would prefer vending machines and other school-based marketing to higher taxes.