One nation under billboards

Huge budget cuts to education are nothing new, but they’ve struck closer to home recently. In the school district where I grew up, teachers whom I love and respect and who had a profound impact on my intellectual development started receiving reduction-in-force notices this past week. If a referendum does not pass in my hometown to help fund the school system, these teachers will be fired.

My school district is not the only one that faces firing excellent educators. It has forced some districts to get overly creative to find funds, sometimes with vaguely disturbing ideas.

One of the newest trends in funding education is advertising. In states like Colorado and Utah, bright yellow school buses now bear both elementary school children and banners advertising local businesses. In other school districts, ads show up in public school cafeterias, on schools’ official websites and in parking lots.

Districts aren’t exactly making a fortune on the ads. One Texas advertising company that specializes in school bus marketing (because apparently this is so prolific, entire companies can specialize in it now) said a district with 250 school buses could make about $1 million in four years by selling ad space.

That’s no small chunk of change. It could mean a school district could retain an art teacher or band program, for example. But to put it in perspective, my hometown school district has already cut $4.5 million in the past two years, and that still hasn’t been enough to keep all of their personnel.

So is it worth it? Advertising on school space is dubious at best, manipulative at worst.

School is where we both educate and socialize our children to become functional members of society.

Those elementary and middle school corkboards with happy sayings and construction paper cutouts of butterflies were silly, but they’re an important part of the school atmosphere; they make school a bright place that encourages a love of learning. Replacing them with ads for Davidson Family Insurance or inevitably, McDonald’s or Gatorade, only gives our children a lesson in consumerism.

But maybe the even bigger issue is that school districts have to consider selling ad space to begin with just to make ends meet.

Can’t we care enough about our students to pass legislation and referenda to fund our schools so they do not have to rely on the dubious advertising “generosity” of Pepsi and major corporations? Public education should not have to rely on the free market.

If we don’t make education a priority from public funding, we might one day find ourselves helping our own children with their “Math: brought to you by Texas Instruments” homework.  

­— mebinder@indiana.edu