INTRO TEXT
In a little-noticed rider tacked onto the state budget this spring, lawmakers gave Massachusetts school districts the green light to sell advertising on the outside of school buses. But don’t look for big yellow vans hawking Slurpees, Nikes, or J. Lo’s latest CD to roll by anytime soon. Despite the state okay, school officials aren’t jumping at the chance to start trading ad space for textbook money. Glenn Koocher, director of the Massachusetts Association of School Committees, says he’s not aware of “a single district” that is exploring the new revenue-generating option.
That’s welcome news as far as state Rep. Philip Travis is concerned. The Rehoboth Democrat chaired a House commission on school bus safety in the 1980s and says papering over the universally recognized bright yellow buses with advertising is a “terrible idea” that could put kids at risk. “God forbid we have an accident by having someone come [driving] at a bus reading the literature on the side of the bus instead of paying attention to the fact that it’s a school bus,” says Travis.
A national school transportation group cited the same concerns two years ago in declaring its opposition to school bus advertising. “We do not think it’s a wise move,” says Ted Tull, director of the National Association of State Directors of Pupil Transportation Services. “They’re looking at money,” he says of those who favor the idea. “We’re looking at safety.”
House Minority Leader Francis Marini, who sponsored the measure, insists bus ads could represent a valuable source of revenue for cash-strapped school districts without costing taxpayers anything. But school budgets aren’t the only tight squeeze critics are worried about.
“I wouldn’t like to see the Guess jeans ad on our school buses–with all those bare navels,” says state Rep. Anne Paulsen of Belmont, who spoke against Marini’s budget rider on the House floor.
Her worries may not be that far-fetched. The new law says bus ads must be “age appropriate” and not promote alcohol, tobacco, drugs, or gambling, but it’s not clear just how much censorship school districts could exercise over ad content, if put to the test. Indiana officials opted several years ago not to pursue the idea of school bus advertising, in part because of legal concerns that the rolling billboards could be deemed a “limited public forum,” and therefore subject to First Amendment protections, a worry also raised by the national student transportation group.
Meanwhile, some aren’t keen on the idea, no matter what products are being pitched. “The whole notion of inundating children even more with marketing is pretty terrible,” says Susan Linn, associate director of the media center at the Judge Baker Children’s Center in Boston and a leader of the national coalition Stop Commercial Exploitation of Children.
Marini’s bill looked dead last year, when the House public safety committee buried it in a study (“Big yellow billboard,” CommonWealth, Fall ’01). Some saw its fast-track approval through the budget as a farewell present from House leaders to the Hanson Republican, who is leaving office in January and has been nominated for a district court judgeship.
But the ad wars may not be over. Even with the cool reception the law has received to date, Travis says he’s taking no chances. “The first thing I will do in the next session is file a bill to have that removed,” he says.