Report: Commercialism in the Seattle Public Schools 2002

Report: Commercialism in the Seattle Public Schools 2002
By Brita Butler-Wall
One year ago, the Seattle School Board adopted a district-wide policy on advertising and commercial activities in response to a broad community campaign spearheaded by the Citizens' Campaign for Commercial-Free Schools. We have just completed a commercialism walkthrough of all 11 Seattle Middle Schools to evaluate the implementation of the policy and accompanying Board-adopted procedures.
This report summarizes our findings and compares results with those of our walkthrough of 30 schools five years ago. Recommendations follow.

Advertising to Students                 Needs Improvement

Policy: Students shall not be required to view advertising, i.e. observe, listen to, or read commercial advertising in the school building (with a few exceptions).
Practice: We found significantly fewer wall advertisements than five years ago, particularly in common areas such as hallways, but many wall ads still remain. In addition, advertising book covers are still distributed to students in most middle schools; and display cases provided by advertisers (one new, one at least 6 years old) were found in two schools. A list of the products and companies found in the 2002 Walkthrough is attached.

Channel One                 Very Good

Policy: Channel One is to be phased out by the 2004-2005 school year.
Practice: We found that actual use of Channel One had dropped dramatically in several schools, through renouncing or creative non-compliance with the contract. Only three middle schools actually show Channel One to students, down from 10 middle schools just five years ago .

Principal Review                 No Data

Policy: Information concerning educational activities or opportunities of interest to students and others in the school community, such as flyers and brochures regarding such things as sports camps, music lessons, and tutors shall be permitted provided that the principal or designee reviews the material in advance.
Logos are permitted for products or sponsor identification, but not for the purpose of advertising to students. School-based personnel are the primary decision-makers, using a set of specified criteria.
Practice: Many logos and 'informational ads and announcements were found. Our survey instrument did not specifically include this question; however, we found no evidence of any review process so this may be an area to get more data on.

Kids Involved with Sponsors                 Needs Improvement

Policy: School activities should not be about a commercial sponsor, e.g., students should not be required to make art projects or writing essays primarily about sponsors.
Practice: No evidence of student activities 'about' most corporate partners; however, students in some middle (and elementary) schools are asked to bring their family and friends to eat at McDonalds fast-food restaurants on a designated night as a way of supporting their school. Teachers, principals, and sometimes parents provide the free labor for McDonalds. The McTeacher Night deal involves advertising in schools for 7-10 days before the event, and is a new form of commercialism.
Promotional Info in Educational Materials                 No Data

Policy: Neither the District nor any school shall purchase or use any sponsored educational materials that contain promotional information about a product, service, company or industry that is inappropriate to the lesson being taught in the content of the curriculum.
Practice: Some teachers are using inappropriate promotional material from corporations in their lessons; we found no evidence of a review process in any school, other than the individual teacher's own judgement about using unsolicited corporate materials on a case-by-case basis.
Logos on Reader Boards and Other Facilities                 Excellent

Policy: Advertising is not permitted on scoreboards, reader-boards, or building facades, walls or floors or in Memorial Stadium.
Practice: No logos or ads were seen on these middle school scoreboards, reader-boards, or building facades, walls, or floors (aside from advertising posters on indoor walls, referenced above). The District Website includes the regulation prohibiting advertising in Memorial Stadium.
Students Used as Advertisers                 Needs Improvement

Policy: Students shall not be required to advertise a product, service, company, or industry. For example, advertising on athletic uniforms and equipment is prohibited, although the logo of the manufacturer can appear.
Practice: One middle school site council has recently adopted a school-wide 'noncommercial fundraiser' policy that covers all school fundraisers, including ASB. In many middle schools, however, students are asked to sell brand-name products in exchange for token 'prizes'. Teachers, parents, and students have commented on the coercive nature of these 'voluntary' activities.
Vending Machine Facades                 Needs Improvement

Policy: Vending machine facades shall not be used for advertising, although the name and logo of the product manufacturer can appear if they are for identification purposes only (meet a set of criteria).
Practice: Two middle schools have eliminated student access to soft drink machines altogether. One school's machines have only small logos, as permitted by the policy, and are not turned on until after the last lunch, as per federal guidelines.
Large advertising facades are still visible, however, on some fronts and many sides of machines despite district assurances in September of 2002 that they had all been replaced. Most of the façade changes so far have involved machines that advertised Coca-Cola; vending machines that advertise Sprite, Powerade, Snapple, Fruitopia, or Dasani are still common, although the language of the policy clearly prohibits them as well.
Note Seattle School District Policy prohibits sale of all carbonated beverages in all vending machines in secondary schools until after the last lunch period [Policy E 13.00, Procedure 3.a. (2)]. Most middle schools are out of compliance with this policy.
Public Involvement                 Failing

Policy: Parents and community members shall be consulted in the decision-making process and be well informed about the nature and extent of commercial activity in the schools. (through letter, announcement in PTA/school newsletter, school websites. etc.).
Practice: We found no evidence of any announcement of the commercialism policy to parents or PTA; there is no mention of the commercialism policy on district website. In fact, several teachers were unaware of the policy. Although the Channel One contract permits students to opt out, we found no evidence that parents had been notified of this right , or is there any mention of Channel One in the district booklet comparing features of the middle schools. As of last night, there was not a mention on the district website of any of the advertising or commercial activity we found in schools, including Channel One and McTeacher Nights.

Marketing Information from Students                 Needs Improvement

Policy: School does not distribute to vendors any personal information of students, except as required by law, or contract for products or services where personal information will be collected b the providers.
Practice: N2H2 recently stopped doing market research on students via its filtering software due to public pressure, which would have been covered under this section; however, we found no evidence that the district has stopped asking distributing contest or survey forms which provide marketing information to vendors.
Note The new federal "No Child Left Behind" Act requires schools to provide contact information on all juniors and seniors to military recruiters; however, it also specifies that schools must notify parents in writing that they may choose to withhold such information on their student.
Although schools notify the parents that they may choose to withhold 'Directory Information' on their student, we found no evidence that the district has notified parents that the default is that the district makes 'Directory Information' available to military recruiters; this lack of notification is out of compliance with the Act.
Effort                 Needs Improvement

Although this policy is a comprehensive, district-wide policy that prohibits most forms of advertising and commercialism in 100 public schools, district efforts to enforce it appear to have been minimal. Following a very strong letter sent in July to the School Board by the Citizens' Campaign for Commercial-Free Schools and a broad cross-section of community leaders (attached), a reminder memo was sent via email to principals on September 11, 2002 by the Chief Counsel for the District (attached).
One principal had forwarded the September reminder to her staff via email. During the walkthrough, however, we discovered that many teachers and other staff were unaware of the contents of the policy and procedures. Principals could not produce it on request, and it was not clear to what degree they had attempted to implement the policy in their buildings. Conclusion
On average, the district's performance in implementing the commercialism policy and procedures is less than satisfactory. The middle schools have done excellent work in keeping corporate logos off readerboards and other facilities and have been very good about greatly reducing actual use of Channel One, even before the deadline specified in the policy.
However, the Seattle School District is clearly in need of improvement in five of the seven policy areas covered in the recent walkthroughs advertising to students, involving students with sponsors, using students as advertisers, replacing vending machine facades, and providing personal information on students.
The most fundamental principles of the policy are not being followed. The first principle set out in the board-adopted Procedures clearly states 'All corporate support or activity shall be consistent with State, District, and school academic standards and goals. Commercial involvement must also be structured to meet identified educational needs, not commercial motives'. It's hard to imagine which educational needs are met by encouraging children to eat at McDonalds in order to watch their teachers slinging burgers for free after a hard day of teaching. And which academic standards and goals are met by advertising Kellogg's Cocoa Puffs and Rice Krispies' Treats to children on their bookcovers?
Most disturbing is the failure of the District to involve the public about decisions about commercial activities in schools, as required by the policy and procedures, including privacy notifications regarding personal information required by federal law.
The Seattle commercialism policy was adopted at the insistence of parents and public. The District has received national recognition for their leadership in this area after being nominated for this award by the Citizens' Campaign for Commercial-Free Schools.
The Seattle Policy on ADVERTISING AND COMMERCIAL ACTIVITIES represents many hours of time invested by the School Board members and district staff. This commitment to constituents has clearly not been kept, and the investment of our district resources in this policy is being wasted through lack of any serious, systematic effort on the part of the Superintendent and his staff to implement the policy.
The Seattle community overwhelmingly supported the adoption of a commercialism policy. Citizens were rightly concerned that our public schools were being misused as a vehicle for corporations and other entities - including the military - to gain access to our children and exploit their status as a 'captive audience'. This policy could easily have been fully implemented a week after it was adopted. The fact that the Superintendent and his staff have failed to do so means that they have failed our children. Now, thousands of middle school students have been exposed to another year of advertising - advertising which encourages them to make poor food and beverage choices, to solve their problems through consumption, and to nag their parents for goods their parents cannot afford or do not choose to buy them.
Recommendations
We recommend that the School Board instruct the Superintendent to fully implement the commercialism policy and report that he has done so at the January 8, 2003 School Board meeting. This will involve three easy steps which should take no more than an hour:
a. A phone call to the District's Coca-Cola representative giving the company the choice of replacing all (side and front) facades on all beverage machines by Monday, December 16, or remove those machines from the building until the façades have been replaced. The machines were installed within two days of contract approval so this should not present any difficulty to the corporation.
b. A letter mailed home to all families informing them of the commercialism policy and their right to opt-out of Channel One viewing and to opt-out of permitting student information to be sent to military recruiters. The letter can be enclosed with the fall grade report to save postage, and should also be posted on the district website along with the text of the policy, in a prominent place.
c. A memo to each principal requiring them to fully comply with the policy by January 7, 2003
1. asking one class of students to spend one period removing existing advertising from the building, including promotional logos and book covers. This would be a media literacy experience for the students in alignment with state standards in language arts
2. designating a staff member to review 'educational' announcements before posting or distributing to students
3. designating a staff member to make determinations on the acceptability of all of the logos in the building, according to the criteria set forth in the policy
4. instructing staff, site council, parent and booster groups not to ask students to advertise, sell or otherwise promote commercial products or companies, as per the policy

Implementing the commercialism policy is neither complicated nor difficult. Just do it.

Citizens' Campaign for Commercial-Free Schools
3724 Burke Ave. N.
Seattle WA 98103
Tel 206.523.4922
Email cccs@scn.org