For pupils, a note and ad from school

For pupils, a note and ad from school

Ads for cigarettes and liquor won’t make the cut. But ads for local ice cream shops or hair salons could soon be appearing on permission slips, class calendars, and school notices sent home with Peabody elementary school students after a unanimous School Committee vote this week. The novel plan to sell ad space on school communications marks the latest twist in how commercialization of schools — from the sale of billboard space to ads on buses — is generating cash in lean times. The ads, possibly the first of their kind in Massachusetts, “will have to be age-appropriate, but we’re thinking about ads from local pizza and ice cream shops, dance and karate schools, maybe from a florist or a college,’’ said Superintendent C. Milton Burnett. The initial program aims to earn at most $24,000. School officials plan to send letters in coming days to solicit ads from more than 500 members of the city’s Chamber of Commerce. They expect advertisers to pay $300 to run ads on some 10,000 sheets of paper in one elementary school. If a business wants to run ads for all elementary schools in the district, the cost will be $2,000.

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I can't think of a worse way of making a kid want to buy something then it being "officially" sanctioned by their school.
How uncool is that!

Agreed, not the best idea. I don't know why I find this so creepy. I guess I wanted schools to stay a little more separate from business. It just seems creepy to have a learning institution peddling wares. I thought the vending machines were bad enough personally.

I think people are at the stage at the moment where they are so surrounded by advertising that they don't even really see it any more.

I can''t remember the last time when i noticed what the ads on ATS were actually advertising, they're just noise

It's really not that much different from ice cream shops and restaurants sending vouchers home with students making the school's honor roll. It's one of those desperate times call for desperate measures kind of thing.

What happened to the old discount coupon books that they used to sell?

reply to post by maria_stardust


That's a good point actually. I probably did get a little carried away envisioning kids getting led display backpacks marching down the street advertising the local strip club.