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STATELINE By Chris Pipho

The Selling of Public Education

PUBLIC EDUCATION is a bigger business than we realize. Lawrence Picus and Jimmy Bryan, writing about the economic impact of K-12 public education in the Los Angeles area in the August 1997 issue of Education and Urban Society, spun out some numbers that jar the senses. Nationally, they pegged expenditures for K-12 public education at $260 billion for 1996-97. California accounted for 30.4 billion of those dollars. They also said that California's 1,000 school districts employed over 500,000 people and educated 5.3 million students. Big business by any reckoning! The two University of Southern California professors also said that, if the California education enterprise were placed on the Fortune 500 list, "it would rank 22nd, just above Metropolitan Life Insurance and immediately below Pepsi Co. and Hewlett-Packard."

Selling Off Pieces of the System

Astute entrepreneurs are always looking for ways to gain an edge over their competitors in market share. In recent months this search has begun to focus on school districts, and soft drink companies, with their deep pockets stuffed with cash, are leading the race. Last school year, advertising on school buses and leasing a small piece of school grounds for a cellular phone tower were big news. This year multimillion dollar contracts for exclusive product rights are waking up school boards and administrators around the country.

In Colorado, the Jefferson County schools (the state's largest district, with nearly 90,000 students) approved a deal with Pepsi that estimates suggest will bring in $7.3 million over the next seven years. Pepsi is donating $2.1 million to help build a new football stadium. In return, the company will have exclusive rights to sell soft drinks in all 140 school buildings and have the right to advertise their products in the district's stadiums, fields, and gymnasiums. As part of the agreement, school officials can renegotiate the contract if at any time they feel it is having an adverse impact on the curriculum or students. At least one board member was concerned about the negative impact of the decision on students. The district has set a goal of raising $10 million from corporate sponsors and has assigned one staff member to coordinate this activity. U.S. West had already agreed to donate $2 million in exchange for putting its name on the new football stadium; other sponsors are apparently waiting in the wings for board approval of large donations.

Down at West Lake High School in Austin, Texas, the students will be able to buy only Coke products from school vending machines. The district collected $350,000 from the soft drink manufacturer to start the deal and will get a percentage of profits. Some of the money is earmarked for a softball field. At least five other districts in Texas have apparently signed similar deals, and the idea seems to be catching on in other parts of the country. The Bozeman, Montana, schools (4,900 students) signed a four-year, $120,000 contract with Pepsi. Athletic shoe deals are being mentioned in other districts around the country. Adidas has completed a deal with eight Oklahoma high schools. Their sports teams will be wearing Adidas shoes, socks, and T-shirts, and the schools will get discounts of up to 30% when purchasing other Adidas products.

A Philosophical Impact Statement Is Needed

If these districts can do it, what about the rest? If Jefferson County, Colorado, can raise more than $7 million on a 90,000-student enrollment, what could Los Angeles do with its 1.5 million students? What if a state legislature wants to cut a statewide deal with one of these companies? Alex Molnar, a professor at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, has said that such deals stem from "an erosion in our culture between what is public and what is private. . . . [They represent] a subversion of the idea that the school is for the public welfare."
The questions arising from these most recent deals will no doubt proliferate, but schools don't really have an unblemished record with regard to commercial involvement. Magazine sales, PTA raffles, and candy sales for band uniforms are commonplace and may all be small potatoes. But even in the old days variations on the theme were endless. I remember my first teaching job in a small rural town. I rented the apartment over the hardware store and got a good deal on a refrigerator that had just been moved out of the high school because the store owner always put the latest model in the home economics room at the beginning of the school year. Maybe not much has changed -- except that the price has gone up!

The Impact of Free-Market Reforms

Most professional educators and their organizations have expressed varying degrees of alarm over efforts to privatize parts of the education system. In some states there appears to be a growing concern that efforts to expand charter schools will take much-needed resources away from regular public schools. The yearly trek to the legislature for additional state money, court cases dealing with the equity of school finance, and tax limitation measures have left educators with a "hat in hand" mindset that assumes we have to guard the dollars we have and fight for any additional revenue. One might well wonder whether some group of rural legislators, representing only a few cases of Pepsi a week, won't be looking for a way to tap the revenue flowing to big districts when funding formulas come up in legislative sessions.

Sometimes school boards and superintendents see only the fiscal issues and let the principled underpinnings of public education get tended to by professional associations, unions, and even college professors. A Phi Delta Kappa booklet, Do We Still Need Public Schools?, published in 1996, raised some of these fundamental questions for thoughtful citizens. It said, "for every idea being promoted as a solution to the problems of public schools," we should ask a series of questions: Will this reform prepare all Americans to become responsible citizens or just some? Will it improve or exacerbate social ills? Will it promote cultural unity in our society or sharpen divisions? Will it help all people become economically self-sufficient or will it leave some citizens out? Will it contribute to the happiness and enrich the lives of many or just a few? Will it lessen inequities in education or aggravate them? Will it ensure a basic level of quality among all schools or aid only some schools? Such questions too often go unasked.

Developing consistent school board policies has always been an issue. However, the sheer size of some of the advertising contracts may bring up some new equity issues. It is ironic that some boards and superintendents have posted guards at the front door of the schoolhouse so that voucher or privatizing advocates won't steal public education, while leaving the back door and loading ramp unguarded so that the soft drink trucks can back up and unload. The media are probably going to have a field day with some of these stories.

Status of Privatization

Going into its third year of operation, the Edison Project and its "for-profit" ideas will manage 25 schools this year. This is 13 more than last year but still short of the goal set by Christopher Whittle when he launched the idea of a nationwide chain of for-profit schools. So far Edison has invested $45 million in designing curriculum, but even with revenues at approximately $70 million, the project still hasn't reached the break-even point. Most of the Edison schools, now in eight states and 13 cities, are in "conversion" buildings within existing school districts. Starting independent charter schools seems to be the newest thrust for the group. After two years, some initial test scores show good academic growth in reading and mathematics, but most critics are waiting to see if the need to turn a profit will overpower the needs of students.

Meanwhile, the Home School Legal Defense Association has announced that it will start a two-year college just for students who have been educated at home. The organization has purchased 33 acres in northern Virginia and expects to open in two or three years. Michael Farris, president of the association, says the college will allow parents to continue to bypass traditional routes to education. The school will focus on both classroom and on-the-job training for careers in government, politics, and journalism.

The Bottom Line

The main question to ask ourselves is, Have we already sold all of public education, or can we hold the sale to sports complexes and athletic fields? It might take some time to get around to asking the second- and third-order questions: Will Chris Whittle and Channel One find the back door unlocked? What will state legislators do when school funding formulas are debated in 1998? The answers are not yet clear, but it appears that at least some boards and superintendents have weakened their defenses against an array of free-market reform ideas. And such groups as the National Council for Professors of Educational Administration might start wondering whether they need to train administrators for a career in the high-stakes fast lane of economic entrepreneurship.