The 2,300 students at Westfield High School in Fairfax Countyadvertise the AF in Abercrombie & Fitch on their T-shirts and theswoosh of Nike on their sneakers. They walk by Coke machines to reachtheir classrooms, where a few computers have a small Apple on themonitor.
Corporate America's presence on the Chantilly campus may not endthere.
The region's largest school district -- and the country's 14thlargest -- may deliberately expand the level of corporate sponsorshipacross Fairfax, including advertising or sponsorship on school Websites and in cafeterias, gymnasiums and auditoriums and on athleticfields.
No other school district in the Washington area has such a deeprelationship with the corporate sector.
'Given the revenue shortage we are facing -- we have so many areasof need -- we have to look at all potential sources of revenue,'Superintendent Daniel A. Domenech said.
There could one day be a Dell technology lab or a Reebok biologywing in some of Fairfax's 20 high schools. A report released lastweek by a committee of Fairfax school officials, parents andcommunity leaders recommended hiring a consultant to determine howmuch money schools would get in exchange for naming rights.
But Fairfax's 12 school board members are divided on the issue,and they predict that county residents will be, too. For some, theschoolhouse remains the only place free of corporate intrusion, andthey believe that Fairfax should not be dipping its toes into whatthey characterize as the cesspool of commercialism.
'I don't want children to be bombarded with advertising,' said JanAuerbach, a parent from McLean who was on the fundraising committee.'I just don't want to see it in a public facility.'
But at a time of declining state revenue and increasing schoolbudgets, the school district would be wrong to ignore corporatesupport, said backers of the idea. Like it or not, commercialism isembedded in school culture, with marketers having found their captiveaudience years ago, they said.
'We are naive if we think kids do not understand the power ofmarketing and have the power to reject it,' said Dale Rumberger, theprincipal of Westfield High who also served on the fundraisingcommittee. 'Kids are much, much smarter than we give them creditfor.'
These issues are being hashed out in school districts across thenation, where tight fiscal times make such sales pitches harder toignore. In 1998, a school district in Jefferson County, Colo., soldthe naming rights of its athletic stadium to the local telephonecompany for $2 million over 10 years. But in Seattle, communityprotest forced the school board to abandon a $1 million-a-year planto sell advertising to eliminate a $35 million budget shortfall.
Prince George's County Superintendent Iris T. Metts has encouragedthe district's athletic directors to consider selling advertising andnaming rights to the county's gymnasiums, stadiums and athleticfields as a way to offset a 37 percent cut in athletic budgets. Noaction has been taken.
The Montgomery County School Board is considering a policy thatwould allow corporations -- as well as PTAs and other privateindividuals or groups -- to help pay for capital building expenses.
The current discussions in Fairfax are colliding with anincreasingly grim revenue forecast for next year. School officialsbelieve they will lose at least $36 million in state aid because ofthe sputtering state economy. In addition, school planners project aninflux of 3,000 students next year, which will cost another $28million. This year's Fairfax school budget is $1.4 billion.
At Fairfax's Westfield High School, each of the four outdoorscoreboards carries the flowery script of the Coca-Cola logo. Cellphone companies rent space to attach their towers to the tallathletic-field light posts of eight high schools for an initial$25,000 and a $2,000 monthly fee, said Tom Brady, an assistantsuperintendent.
Outside the technology labs at Thomas Jefferson High School forScience & Technology are small plaques bearing the names of thecompanies that paid for the equipment in each lab.
And vending machines are in every school, though in elementaryschools they usually are limited to teachers' lounges. Profits fromthe machines are split between the school and the district, whichuses the money to cut the price of a reduced lunch.
Marketing on school grounds allows companies to build brandloyalty with customers at a young age. And it enhances a company'sreputation to fund and receive credit for things associated with aquality education -- such as new library books or computers -- inaddition to things associated with sports, like scoreboards.
Curtis Etherly, vice president of public affairs for the Mid-Atlantic Coca-Cola Bottling Co., based in Columbia, said the companyis careful to let schools and communities take the lead.
'We ask our school customers to determine how that relationshipshould be shaped,' he said. 'We've never looked at putting Coke inthe classroom.'
Fairfax school officials don't know how many corporaterelationships the district has; there is no official tally. And theyacknowledge that district guidelines on advertising in schools arevague and outdated.
That's why the fundraising committee was formed. The schooldistrict found it was receiving an increasing number of proposalsfrom corporations and didn't know how to respond. 'The big questionis, what's it really worth?' said Fairfax Deputy Superintendent AlanE. Leis. 'Is there really enough money to justify it before we startdown this path?'
At a School Board meeting last week to discuss the issue, boardmembers spent about 30 minutes weighing the possibilities before amajority present said a consultant should be hired. But severalmembers expressed doubts.
'My initial reaction to a lot of this is, whoa, let's hold off,'said Cathy Belter (Springfield).
Board Chairman Jane K. Strauss (Dranesville) was equally hesitant.
'I have real reservations about selling advertising anywhere otherthan in the school newspaper,' she said.
But others insisted that it was important to look into it. 'Ithink we ought to at least have a study,' said Chris Braunlich (Lee).
'What was anathema to all of us for years, we're now saying, hey,let's get with the program,' said Dennis Nelson, the principal ofFloris Elementary School in Herndon. 'This is the 21st century. We'repossibly sitting on a gold mine, and we may not know it.'
Nelson, who also served on the fundraising committee, works in a48-year-old building, the oldest in the county that has not beenrenovated yet. He is battling mice and an erratic heating system. Hehas four trailers on his campus this year and will have seven in thenext two years.
'Schools should be holy, schools should be sacred,' Nelson said.'But the bottom line is, where is the money going to come from?'
Westfield High School is under the Dulles International Airportflight path, Rumberger said, and he wants to investigate what itwould cost to advertise on his roof -- which can't be seen by any ofhis students but is in full view of thousands of airline passengersdaily. Rumberger wouldn't estimate how much revenue he couldgenerate, but another school official said that such advertisingcould bring in about $3.5 million over 10 years.
'In order to increase student achievement, or maintain studentachievement, would I endorse a product? . . . [That] is the $64,000question,' Rumberger said. 'If revenue streams continue in the samemanner -- very unpredictable -- then why wouldn't we?'
