School, Sponsored by (Your Company Here)

Aug. 22, 2005 — -- For 30 years, George Dodson worked in the Plymouth-Canton schools as a teacher, counselor and principal. Now well into his 70s, he's been retired for 15 years but still visits with fifth-graders before they move to middle school and reads stories to younger children.

"They all know me there," Dodson said of the students. "When I walk in, I'm pretty popular there, and I think they'll carry that with them."

The upper middle-class district in suburban Detroit named a new school after him in 2001, George Dodson Elementary, to recognize his years of service. "It is an honor, and I'm very happy about it," said Dodson, who lives in Plymouth, Mich.

But thanks to a unanimous vote by the district's school board in June, another elementary school under construction may soon boast the name of a corporation rather than an educator.

In recent years, school districts have sold ads on buses and naming rights for things such as athletic fields and playgrounds. But districts like Plymouth-Canton and Philadelphia are taking the practice a step further by seeking sponsors for the schools themselves. Faced with tight budgets, officials say it's necessary to seek outside funding to be able to provide programs for their students.

"We wanted to let the community know that we're serious about providing the best education possible and doing that in a way that allows alternative funding sources," said Tom Sklut, chief development officer of Plymouth-Canton Community Schools.

But some watchdogs believe the move would be the height of commercialism in the one place where children should be able to avoid it. "I think it's a terribly sad commentary on the state of education and also the state of this country's public support for public institutions," said Susan Linn, a psychologist and author of "Consuming Kids: Protecting Our Children from the Onslaught of Marketing & Advertising."

A Need for Funds

Schools' partnering with a variety of companies is nothing new, said Bill Chipps, senior editor of IEG Sponsorship Report. Soft drink companies provide beverages, ads are sold on textbook covers and corporations sponsor plays with educational themes, as well as athletic fields.

Chipps said the latest move to sell naming rights follows a trend in municipal marketing, where public property like parks and transportation departments are sponsored by private entities as a way to raise money without increasing taxes. "We see more and more schools kind of explore these public-private partnerships as a way to raise funds," Chipps said.

It makes sense, he said, as districts need additional dollars and marketers target a younger demographic, seeking to establish top-of-mind awareness among kids at an early age. But he cautioned that both sides should be careful. "Schools have to walk a very fine line, and I think corporations that take these deals have to walk a very fine line," he said, adding, "Obviously, the overall concern here is the commercialization of the school."

School officials are aware of the anxieties, ruling out accepting funds from alcohol or tobacco companies and not allowing advertisements to infiltrate schools. "We're definitely not having Budweiser High or any of those things," said Ellen Savitz, chief development officer for the Philadelphia School District, which is hoping to sell naming rights to a new high school building as well as to its labs, gymnasiums, an interactive learning center and other facilities, including individual classrooms.

"Universities do it all the time with everything," Savitz said. "They name the lamp and the shade and the light bulb. So kids are pretty used to that."

The district is building the school in West Philadelphia -- a high-tech "School of the Future" in partnership with Microsoft, which is not providing funds -- for about $63 million, she said. But the goal is to raise between $10 million and $15 million as an endowment in which interest would cover things like additional teachers or sending kids to conferences and other extracurricular activities -- "costs a school budget can't absorb."

That's similar to what Sklut hopes to achieve in Plymouth-Canton now that the school board has approved offering naming rights to its new $15 million elementary school. A company or individual willing to pay 51 percent of the building's cost would be the sponsor.

"This school district has a history of being one that pinches a penny until it screams," he said. But this year's budget has $7 million worth of red ink in it, and the district is deficit spending.

Sklut hopes that the money raised through development activities will go toward "those value-added areas" like summer school programs, the school's Talented and Gifted program, and revamping athletic fields. "We can't afford to do it out of state funds," he said.

What's in a Name?

While they understand the financial stress placed upon many public schools, opponents of selling naming rights say they worry about increased marketing aimed at children, as well as potential conflicts of interest if ideas discussed in class clash with the corporate sponsor's mission.

"Schools are in a terrible, terrible bind right now, and what we all need to be doing is fighting for adequate funding for public education," Linn said. "Really, my heart goes out to them. But this isn't an acceptable solution."

Gary Ruskin, executive director of Commercial Alert, said there is the potential for a positive relationship to turn embarrassingly negative. "Every corporate name is a PR black eye waiting to happen," Ruskin said. "We live in the age of corporate scandals, so today's corporate name on your school might be tomorrow's Enron. That's important."

In addition, he said, "Schools should be named after heroes of history, not after corporations with the deepest pockets."

How exactly the names would be displayed remains unclear, as no offers have been made. In fact, both Savitz and Sklut said they hope to preserve the integrity of naming traditions by possibly naming a school as usual but adding "sponsored by" to the title.

"Would they [school officials] be happy with Reebok for the name of the building? It's very tricky. For the inside spaces, it should be easy -- put a tasteful plaque outside a room," Savitz said. "That's very different than Adidas High School. What we will do is not call it Adidas High School but the School of the Future sponsored by blank, so that it's not really the name of the school, it's just sponsored by, assuming somebody agrees to that."

Marketing Interests Versus Educational Concerns

Linn said that option does little to change the fact that a company would be getting its message in front of children, adding that whether kids like school or not, they know it's supposed to be good for them.

"The expectation is it operates on a higher plane than the rest of life, so the messages that schools give to children are doubly powerful," she said. "If you have a school named after McDonald's or Coca-Cola, the message is these are good products. These are elevated to the level of Martin Luther King. The children are given the message that honor can be bought and doesn't have to be earned."

But for schools looking to salvage programs, the promotional messages may be secondary to the money sponsorships generate. Sklut said the reality is that kids are marketed to "from the day they are born."

"Our community is definitely concerned about those things, and I truly don't know how to respond to that," he said, adding, "It would be difficult if, say, Coca-Cola Co. … said to Plymouth-Canton, 'Here's seven-and-a-half million to name that Smith Elementary School.' For seven-and-a-half million dollars, it would be real hard to say, 'Gee, whiz, we don't want to do that.'"

Chipps said that a balance has to be reached. "Schools, especially schools in urban areas, those schools are all looking for educational programming in addition to what they already offer," he said, "so if a company reaches out to them with some kind of programming that fits their curriculum and the underlying brand messaging wasn't in your face, most schools would be receptive to it."

Community support may guide the final decisions should a potential corporate sponsor step forward, and both Savitz and Sklut said the districts' governing boards would have final say.

But for Dodson, whose name greets children every day, corporate names are not a good alternative. "Certainly we can find ways without getting commercial with our building names," he said.

And he said that doing so would "diminish" the educators honored with namesakes. "I think that, to the children, some of them don't know me or they don't know the other people that the schools were named for," he said. "But I think they associate the school name to someone noteworthy across the community, and I think that's a good thing."