September 29, 1998
TO: SCHOOL BOARD DIRECTORS
FROM: BRITA BUTLER-WALL, Ph.D..
SUBJECT: SSD COMMITTEE ON ADVERTISING AND COMMERCIAL ACTIVITIES
Thank you for the opportunity to serve for the past 11 months as one of the PTA representatives on the SSD Committee on Advertising and Commercial Activities. I enjoyed learning from people with diverse points of view.
I appreciate the intention of the School Board to bring together stakeholders to investigate and discuss this issue in order to develop policy recommendations,
Unfortunately, the intention of the School Board has been seriously undermined. The process itself has been so flawed that there are serious questions about the credibility of the recommendations presented to you by the Committee Chair.
These are simple problems which could have easily been avoided. Three areas of weakness are: the composition and constitution of the committee, the management of committee work, and apparent conflicts of interest by key players. I apologize for the length of this memo and respectfully request that you take the time to read it because it summarizes my observations from many hours of volunteering my time on this committee.
All three areas impact the credibility of the final report, which in turn, has implications for the proposed exclusive contract with Coca-Cola and for the credibility of the School Board.
COMPOSITION AND CONSTITUTION OF THE COMMITTEE
As originally described, the 'advertising committee' was to represent stakeholders and a variety of perspectives. Many people hoped that a diverse group would be able to bring insight to bear on this crucial and complex issue. However the work of the committee was compromised from the outset by the composition and constitution of the committee itself, a fact which several of us noted early on.
Selection Process
First, the process for selecting 'community members' was confusing and unfair. There was no open process (announcement, deadline, criteria, or selection committee). Some people interested in serving called the district office immediately upon the announcement of the formation of the committee and were told their names would be taken; however, they were never contacted. On the other hand, a business consultant specializing in school/business partnerships was appointed as a 'community representative'. She claimed that she had gotten on the committee by 'twisting Don Nielsen's arm' and was in fact then appointed by him to chair the committee.
Composition of the Committee
Second, the actual composition of the committee was out of balance, with striking over representation from the business community and district staff. Even though two of the 'community' appointees already came from a business background, the Chair of the Policy and Legislative Committee later added a new category of 'Business' and appointed 3 more business people to the committee. One of the other 'community' appointees did not even live in the city of Seattle, and after many complaints, was replaced by an actual resident of Seattle.
District staff were well represented on the committee from the beginning. However, principals were recruited halfway through the process and their attendance was spotty. Only one teacher was recruited, and no students. In addition, other district staff often attended the meetings as 'observers', and freely contributed their personal opinions about commercialism issues.
Although PTA was invited to send 3 representatives, parents who were not members of this organization were not represented at all. Unfortunately, the demographics of PTA does not reflect the demographics of the district.
Lack of Quorum
Because of the problems in constituting the committee, as described above, there was no quorum at any of the meetings between November, 1997 and February, 1998 so discussions were very preliminary and informal and largely a waste of time. In fact, some committee slots remained unfilled for 11 months.
MANAGEMENT OF COMMITTEE WORK
The Assistant to the Superintendent was responsible for staffing the meetings. Unfortunately, he was not always able to attend or provide a substitute.
Lack of Organization
Meeting notices were very irregular. Members got as little as one-day's notice of the first meeting. The A&S receptionist was not notified of the location of some of the meetings, resulting in people arriving late. There was no signage to indicate the location of the meeting to the non-district staff, even when meeting locations were changed.
A roster of committee members was not provided until after repeated email and phone requests. Sometimes an agenda was provided at the meetings; sometimes not.
Lack of Impartial Facilitator
The Chair of the Policy and Legislative committee appointed one of the members to serve as Committee Chair. Unfortunately, the lack of an impartial facilitator greatly hampered the workings of the committee. The Chair was unable to restrain her enthusiasms for her opinions, frequently interrupting other members of the committee while chairing the meetings. She also several times arbitrarily made decisions about the composition, functioning, and time-line for the committee, citing 'executive privilege'. Requests for an outside facilitator were ignored.
Lack of record-keeping
A consistent problem with the functioning of the committee was the lack of adequate record-keeping. Several times the Assistant to the Superintendent insisted that he would take minutes of the meetings; however, minutes were rarely distributed to the committee, if indeed they were ever written. This is ironic, since committee members had volunteered to take minutes themselves and were told not to. Eventually, the Committee Chair began distributing an agenda at the meetings which was a combination of her own recollections from the previous meeting and her own agenda. Minutes were not formally corrected or approved by the members.
Lack of regularly scheduled meetings
Due to personal problems, the Chair did not to call any meetings of the committee from June 16 to August .... After this 2-month hiatus, the committee was suddenly informed by the Chair that final policy recommendations were due in September, and in the rush to bring closure to the committee work (possibly due to pressure to complete the negotiations with Coca-Cola), discussion was drastically limited.
Lack of Research
The Committee Chair implies in her recent cover letter that this committee researched the issue of commercialism in school. This was not our experience. It was clear that even at the final meeting, some members of the committee had not even read the 1997 Report on Commercial Activities and Advertising in the Seattle Public Schools, requested by Superintendent Stanford, nor were they familiar with current district policy (included in the appendices of this report). The committee did no surveys, no interviews, no focus groups, no opinion polls, and no literature review. No experts were consulted or brought to meetings. District staff did provide samples of two advertising policies from other districts.
Lack of Discussion
An examination of the agendas for the meetings will reveal that almost no time was spent at meetings actually discussing commercialism issues, except for a 30-minute presentation about Channel One in August.
In contrast, the subcommittee meetings were very productive. All three subcommittees did discuss the subtopics assigned to them. The 'sponsorship' committee, for example, met approximately 10 times for a total of 30 hours. Our discussions were cordial and enlightening.
When our subcommittees were first established in the Spring, the plan was to discuss their recommendations as a larger group, and to identify any areas of contradiction or any gaps. Our committee as a whole realized that there might be types of commercial activity which did not fall into one of the 3 pre-determined categories, or conversely, which might fall into more than one.
In August, there was a sudden change of plans and format. Because of the new format designed by the Assistant Counsel for the District, subcommittees were not allowed to educate the larger committee about their work; instead, they were limited to 2 minutes to present their rationale before a vote was taken on items they may have spent months working on. There was no room on the agenda for discussing any gaps or overlaps in the work of the subcommittees.
CONFLICTS OF INTEREST
Channel One
One of the subcommittee chairs admitted a client relationship with the corporation which owns Channel One. Although several committee members objected to this conflict of interest, he remained on the committee.
Coca-Cola Corporation
In August, the committee's meetings were taken over by the Assistant Counsel for the District. He set the agenda, limited discussion to 3 minutes for any given issue, set the rules for voting, etc. In our view, this was an inappropriate role, since this individual was also the author of the Coke contract, and had reportedly spent many hours negotiating this contract during the summer. ( Note, for example, that in his haste to complete the contract negotiations, he neglected to give copies of the contract to all members of the advertising committee, even though he had been instructed to do so by the School Board.)
WEAKNESSES OF THE FINAL REPORT
One of the most serious consequences of the dual role played by the Assistant Counsel, in transforming the subcommittee reports into a series of points to be voted on, was the change of some key wording of the original subcommittee report. The committee at large thus had no opportunity to discuss or vote on the original recommendation of the advertising subcommittee. Instead, the committee ended up debating the semantics of 'captive' audience as it relates to the concept of 'closed campus', a point irrelevant to the substance of the subcommittee recommendations.
The crucial error in allowing the Assistant District Counsel to redefine 'captive' audience - intentional or not - has now led to a draft policy which appears to condone seeking paid advertising in schools, which is, in fact, the opposite of the subcommittee recommendations and contradicts other recommendations of the committee.
Furthermore, there was no discussion or vote on exclusive contracts. This is a striking omission, given that the Chair of the Policy and Legislative Committee has pointed out that the Coke contract is 'the biggest advertising deal we have ever done'. An exclusive, district-wide contract represents an unprecedented type of commercial activity in the schools, in which the building principals receive money not just for the sale of soft drinks, but for the right of exclusive access to middle and high school students, via signage. In fact, the Committee Chair explicitly prohibited the committee from discussing this issue.
IMPLICATIONS FOR THE COKE CONTRACT
There is no foundation for basing the School Board's decision about the Coca-Cola contract on the report of the advertising committee. The School Board is now faced with getting input on this unprecedented form of commercial activity from stakeholders in some other way, perhaps through a series of community forums or public hearings.
IMPLICATIONS FOR PUBLIC SUPPORT
The School Board has demonstrated good faith with the public in seeking to involve a wide variety of stakeholders in developing recommendations in an important issue which affects education. However, there are serious questions about the validity of the findings in regard to the advertising committee recommendations in particular, for the reasons I have outlined above.
To adopt the committee report in toto would be a mistake. The discrepancy between the subcommittee reports and the final report deserves your attention. Public trust in the School Board will be greatly enhanced if you take seriously the problems of conflict of interest, mismanagement, and imbalance in the Advertising Committee as you deliberate thoughtfully about the issue of commercial activities in the Seattle Public Schools.