Getting Corporations Out of Washington Schools

by Glenn Reed, contributor

The Seattle school board scored a victory against commercialism in the schools recently when it voted to phase out the controversial Channel One from all schools by the 2004-2005 school year; prohibit advertising in various areas such as scoreboards, athletic fields building facades, walls or floors; bar the obtaining of marketing information from students; and prohibit the use of student advertising on uniforms or athletic equipment.

The Board’s actions were weaker than what was promoted by the Citizens’ Campaign for Commercial-Free Schools (CCCS) and other opponents of school advertising, but they have come a long way from when School Board and then-District Superintendent, John Stanford, proposed selling advertising space on school walls in order to raise revenue.

“It’s a complete turnaround from where the school board was five years ago,” said Brita Butler-Wall, a former teacher at Seattle University, parent and the founder of the CCCS. “However, there are still gigantic loopholes.” These gaps leave schools as open targets for the proliferation of corporate logos by letting individual schools decide if a logo constitutes advertising (bad) or identifying the corporation (supposedly ok). The same applies to the ubiquitous vending machines, where new rules state that the beverage logo can appear if it is only for identification purposes. Whre is the line between advertising and corporate logo identification? In fact, the Board got timid on the issue by voting down an amendment that would have prohibited corporate logos.

Local activists, however, led by the CCCS, are not giving up the fight. This grass-roots group, which coalesced in late 1996, has since grown to a 1,000-plus members who are concerned about the pervasive corporate presence in the public schools. The group works closely with the Portland-based Commercial Alert and the Oakland-based Center for Commercial Free Public Education.

The CCCS and others are working against the use of the Channel One “news” program, corporate-produced “educational” materials which are shipped to teachers unsolicited; vending machines and the selling of junk foods in lunch rooms, and more. They also raise the question of why schools are not being adequately funded in the first place.

“We’re caught up in an immoral cycle,” says Nathan Hale High School teacher, Ted Lockery. “They (school administrators) try to make up for a budget deficit by hurting people they’re trying to help. They’re using our kids by selling access to them in order to balance the books.” Lockery has been actively fighting “commercial creep” since 1996 and blasts the proliferation of junk food in school cafeterias, hallways and even classrooms. “We raise money for them (school children) by selling drugs, sugar and caffeine, then get upset when they can’t sit still in class,” he said. “It’s now common to see students forego lunch for bags of chips, pop and candy.”

Activist Sylvia Haven, a librarian in the Shoreline School District for 25 years, added: “It’s blatant commercialism through gaudy dispensers,” she says of vending machines. “They overwhelm everything else in sight and it’s too much a temptation for kids.” Haven also blasted corporate-produced “lesson plans” and other materials. “It’s like a stealth attack on schools,” she says. “Teachers get a lot of information to dispense and it’s often difficult to determine who actually produced it unless you do a lot of investigation.” She said the school library had received a video tape that, after much investigation, was found to have been produced by Exxon and which discussed….the ozone hole.

Butler-Wall noted a lesson plan called “Project Learning Tree” which can be traced to the timber products industry, and a curriculum created by Hershey’s which actually discusses the role of….chocolate chips …in the food pyramid. Shades of Ronald Reagan and ketchup defined as a vegetable!

Another corporate gimmick is the “The Sonics ‘Read to Succeed’ program that is about reading but is “covered with Sonics and other logos, but doesn’t even bring any money into the schools. It’s pure gimmick for their benefit,” said Butler-Wall.

Still, many voice optimism about the drive to kick the corporations out of the public schools. The next battle will be to get the present Board to not renew the Coke machine contract, which expires in 2003, and to ban all corporate logos. “We’ll keep the pressure on until advertising is completely out of schools,” Butler-Wall said. “Public schools are funded by our taxes to provide one thing: education. Anything used for corporate profits is a misuse of public funding.”

For more information on the Citizens’ Campaign for Commercial-Free Schools, write to CCCS, 3724 Burke Avenue North, Seattle, WA 98103, call (206) 523-4922; at www.scn.org/cccs.