The Nexus

Schools around California have begun this school year coming up with creative ways to ease the impact of the recent budget cuts.

For example, schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District have asked the city’s professional sports teams to help support the high school ones, basically sponsoring them.

In San Diego County, certain schools are selling the naming rights to two sixth grade camps to cover budget losses.

Schools in PUSD have also attempted various methods to raise some extra money.

For example, at Rancho Bernardo High School, a teacher sold advertising space on his mock AP exams. Although advertisements can make money, Principal Dawn Kastner said it raises a bigger issue with students and advertising.

A station called Channel 1 offered to give schools free televisions that would air a brief current event program which would have to be watched by the students every day.

“This was a newscast for students but with advertising geared toward teenagers,” Kastner said. “It’s nice to have new televisions, but to force the students to watch the ads does not seem right.”

Westview has come up with other creative ways to help offset the budget cuts that does not force students to pay attention to the advertisements on Channel 1. Most of these efforts are focused on Westview’s athletic department.

The majority of fundraising in the district happens at the local school site level. Most of the schools have wanted it that way.

“The schools believe individuals are more likely to give to their school rather than to district-wide efforts,” Superintendent Don Phillips said. “I know all of our school communities are using the connections through their site foundations to reach out to parents and the broader community to raise funds.”

Although most Westview sports rely on the donations from parents, some teams have sold advertisements in their courts and fields.

“The difference between the advertising on the fields and the ones on the television is that kids [would be] forced to watch the broadcast every day while kids are not forced to look at the ads on the fields,” Kastner said.

The biggest blow for the sports teams was the complete loss of their transportation budget, which means that all sports teams have to raise enough money to be able to pay for transportation to their away games.

Most of the teams ask for a $90 contribution from every player. This has amounted to about $57,000 for the school last year. Besides these contributions, Westview has also received help in other ways.

“This year, Westview had two brand new vans donated by the PUSD Transportation Department,” Athletic Director Chris Carter said. “These could be used to transport the smaller sports teams such as the golf team and would cut down on transportation costs dramatically.”

The Athletic Department has also set up a Westview clothing line that gives all the money raised back to the school.

“For the first time in Westview’s history, I have set up a partnership with Boat House Team Sports,” Carter said. “This program sells 10 pieces of Westview merchandise which raises money for all the sports programs.”

Furthermore, some revenue has come in from the advertisements on the baseball fields, but not as much as Carter would like.

He is also looking into buying a new scoreboard for the football field. This scoreboard would include small sections for advertisements that could generate additional revenue, although the purchase of one is far in the future.

With the current economic crisis affecting eduction so heavily advertisers are focusing their efforts on pushing their products as the solution to the educational mess.

“A lot of companies are willing to donate or pay for materials but there is always a catch [and this] is the thing that most schools are struggling with,” Kastner said. “They don’t want to hurt education.”