School-bus ads a good idea?

PHILADELPHIA'S cash-strapped school district is hungry for every penny it can get, but should it put ads on school buses to make dough?

Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds Brown recently floated this question in a poll on her Facebook page, and plans to hold hearings next year to explore the possibility. She got the idea, she said, from New Jersey lawmakers, who voted in January to permit such ads.

Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Tennessee, Texas and Utah also allow them. Idaho lawmakers recently rejected a proposal to do so, citing concerns that the ads could look like an endorsement from schools.

Pennsylvania does not permit ads on school buses, but Brown said that if she gets good feedback at Council hearings she would issue a recommendation to state lawmakers and the School Reform Commission to allow them. (Council doesn't have the authority to authorize the ads on its own.)

In dire times, Brown said, any strategy to boost education funding should be explored.

"I do not believe we can continuously go back to residents year after year to ask them to pay more taxes, unless we exhaust other potential revenue streams," she said.

This year, the city raised property taxes by 3.85 percent and increased parking-meter fees to plug a small part of the school district's $629 million budget deficit.

In Brown's vision, ads would appear on both the inside and outside of school buses and be geared toward both children and adults. She said ads that promote certain products, like alcohol and tobacco, shouldn't be permitted. She's not sure how she feels about ads for soda.

In New Jersey, both local schools and state officials have to approve an ad before it shows up on a school bus.

District spokesman Fernando Gallard said school leaders have discussed alternative sources of revenue, such as selling naming rights, and would be willing to talk about the possibility of bus ads, too.

"We are definitely open to exploring those types of tools to raise funds," he said.

Helen Gym, a founder of Parents United for Public Education, has mixed feelings about the idea. She said she is against marketing to children.

"I'm willing to entertain lots of diverse and provocative ideas around funding, but the problem is that when children become marketing vehicles for profit, you have to be really, really careful," Gym said. "We should avoid advertising to such a vulnerable population."

In other states, people have expressed concern about exposing undiscerning children to ads in an educational setting.

Brown said her hearings would explore the possibility of limiting the ads to buses carrying middle- and high-school students, because she is concerned about advertising's effects on younger kids.

Mary Tracy, executive director of Philadelphia's Society Created to Reduce Urban Blight, did not outright object to the idea of school-bus ads, but said she is concerned about ever more space being consumed by advertising. She questioned if revenue from the ads would bring in enough money during a down economy to justify their existence.

A spokesman for Alpha Media, a Texas-based company that manages school-bus advertisements, said the district could expect to make $1,000 per bus each year from the ads. The school district has at least 500 buses.

It wouldn't be the first time public space was peddled in Philly. Since the 1990s, a contractor has sold ads on the city's bus shelters, then used those funds to maintain the shelters. The ads also bring in an additional $1 million for the city annually.