High fuel prices and an expansive district have prompted the Douglas County School District to give a green light to advertisers.
The district this month began a pilot program that allows advertisements to be plastered across the sides of yellow school buses, bringing in thousands of dollars in revenue.
It’s not a unique idea. A few Colorado districts already do it, Cherry Creek among them. Others, including Jefferson County, are considering it.
We understand the need for money – higher fuel prices have put a crimp on all school budgets – and we applaud the outside-the-box thinking, but school districts should resist the urge to sell advertising space on taxpayer-funded buses.
The amount of possible revenue isn’t worth the message it sends to children. It isn’t worth the targeting of children as consumers at, now literally, every turn. (Cherry Creek, which has $12 million transportation budget, will collect about $90,000 this year from the ads.)
Schools should be places of learning, not places where children are bombarded with advertisements urging them to drink Coke, eat McDonald’s or wear Nike.
One ad on a Douglas County bus, pictured in this week’s Denver Post, promotes the television show “America’s Next Top Model” with a picture of model Tyra Banks.
Nothing like sending a negative body-image message to youngsters first thing in the morning and again at the end of the day.
Douglas County has a contract with a group called “Media Advertising in Motion” to run a variety of ads, including television shows from CW2, a network primarily geared toward young viewers. Children are bombarded with enough ads already.
Plus, we see a fundamental safety question. School buses are yellow for a reason. The color was chosen decades ago because of its high visibility.
“What you want motorists to watch are the signals, the stop lights and kids getting off the bus, not reading ads and missing safety cues,” said Robin Leeds, an industry specialist with the National School Transportation Association. Many states don’t allow the advertising because of safety concerns.
We’re not so naive as to think schools are free of advertising. Book covers often carry ads, and brand-name foods are sold in schools.
But if districts decide they can’t live without the advertising income, we hope they at least use some discretion in what they put on the sides of their buses.
Top models need not apply.
