How it works: Students heading for PE at Alice Costello Elementary in Brooklawn, New Jersey, no longer simply go to the gym. Your Name Here: Selling naming rights for school buildings “Are you going to live in a world where you’re trying to solve problems on your own, with your limited budget, or are you going to live in a realistic world?” he asks. But Jerald Newberry, who directs the NEA’s Health Information Network, told the paper that schools can’t afford to be overly picky about the sources of funding for such projects. “Food companies are going heavily into ‘cause marketing’ to get the imprimatur of outside, supposedly well-meaning groups,” Gary Ruskin of Commercial Alert, a nonprofit that tracks the effects of commercialism, told USA Today. Critics say the Atkins label on such efforts gives the company a subtle, legitimized way to introduce its brand to impressionable minds. How it doesn’t: Nearly everyone agrees that childhood obesity is a dangerous problem, but not everyone thinks it’s appropriate to let a food-fad guru’s company underwrite efforts to fight it. Atkins says it will also provide “the latest research and information available on controlled-carbohydrate nutrition” for an NEA Web site meant to promote good health. How it works: Atkins Nutritionals is funding the nutrition and exercise initiatives of an in-school anti-obesity program put together by the National Education Association, the National Association of State Boards of Education, and other groups. Your Message Here: Equating health with a company name “That, in my opinion, is a misuse of public facilities and public funds, and it’s a complete perversion of what education is about.” RICH DIET “I believe that a public school has no business promoting particular private companies or brands,” says Brita Butler-Wall, vice president of the Seattle school board and co-founder of the independent watchdog group Citizens’ Campaign for Commercial-Free Schools. How it doesn’t: While community opposition in Miami has been minimal, the nationwide trend of advertising on school property has drawn vocal critics. Local pupil Lynda Hunt-Dorta told the Miami Herald, “This isn’t really something that mind.” The company’s vice president, David Hill, says that the ads will be strictly monitored and that only public service announcements and ads pertaining to such topics as “nutrition, exercise, and school supplies” are permitted-preferable to “the ones kids see every weekend on Nickelodeon,” he adds. Under the terms of the conceptual proposal green-lighted this past spring, the company would sell and install the ads, routing 25 percent of the revenue to the district-as much as $2 million per year, school board members said. School Bus Advertising is already selling ad space elsewhere in Florida, and similar ventures are under way in Massachusetts and under consideration in other states but Miami-Dade would be the first large urban school district to make its bus-riding students a captive audience. How it works: The Miami-Dade County school board approved a plan allowing a private company to place student-targeted ads inside district buses.
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