Why the stampede into the classroom? "That's where the kids are," says Alex Molnar, director of the Center for the Analysis of Commercialism in Education at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. "Companies like to say they are promoting education and school-business partnerships, but what they're really doing is going after the kids' market anywhere they can." Ira Mayer, publisher of Youth Markets Alert, an industry newsletter, notes that companies "want to get them started young--and hopefully keep them for life--that's what brand loyalty is all about." In 1997, children 4 to 12 spent an estimated $24.4 billion, according to American Demographics. Last year, kids 12 to 19 spent an estimated $141 billion, according to Teenage Research Unlimited. Meanwhile, many cash-strapped public schools find it difficult to resist corporate-sponsored advertising and handouts, especially when they come with free computers or new football stadiums and scoreboards.

Nowhere is the convergence of schoolhouse need and corporate greed more apparent than in Colorado Springs. At Palmer High School, students walk through hallways dotted with signs for national brands and local companies, eat in a snack bar sporting brand-new vending machines, use computers with ad-bearing mouse pads and play basketball in a gym decorated with banners of corporate sponsors.

"This was the first school district in the nation to offer advertising opportunities, and the results have been great for our students," said Kenneth Burnley, superintendent of Colorado Springs School District 11. Burnley dreamed up the district's advertising and corporate-partnership programs in 1993, after years of coping with harsh budget cuts. When Burnley took over in 1989, the school district was $12 million in the red. Although Colorado Springs, located about sixty miles south of Denver, is best known for its beautiful weather and tourist attractions like Pike's Peak, it's also the state's second-largest city, and its schools suffer from ills common to urban school districts: overcrowded classes, lack of extracurricular programs and crumbling school buildings. There's also the problem that until 1996, city voters had not approved a tax increase for education in more than two decades. (In a 1999 survey by Education Week, Colorado was ranked forty-ninth in the nation in the adequacy of resources devoted to education.)

"Our taxpayers have challenged us to be more creative and businesslike in how we finance the schools, so we decided to take a page out of business's book," says Burnley. "I realized we could sell for cash something we always had, but never knew we had"--access to students. So far, some fifty companies have signed up as corporate partners, at a cost ranging from $1,500 to $12,000. Top dollar buys advertising rights on school buses, in all schools and four public-address announcements at every basketball and football game, among other benefits. A $1,500 check buys a 2 feet x 5 feet sign in one school and tickets to attend school athletic events. District 11 officials say the advertising packages bring in about $100,000 in revenue annually.

But the district's biggest and most lucrative deal is with Coke. Under a contract signed nearly two years ago, the district will receive $8.4 million over ten years--and more if it exceeds its requirement of selling 70,000 cases of Coke products a year. Along with the contract come other Coke-sponsored sweeteners, like a contest in which a Chevrolet Cavalier was awarded to a senior with perfect attendance.

Last fall, a top District 11 official sent a letter to administrators urging them to increase sales of Coke products in their schools in order to meet their sales goal. In the letter, John Bushey, the official who oversees the contract, instructed principals to allow students virtually unlimited access to Coke machines and to move the machines to where they would be "accessible to the students all day." Wrote Bushey: "Research shows that vendor purchases are closely linked to availability," adding, "location, location, location is the key." The confidential letter, which was first published by the Colorado Springs Independent, also urged teachers to allow students to drink Coke in the classroom: "If soda is not allowed in classes, consider allowing juices, water, and teas." Bushey signed the letter "The Coke Dude."

The letter, and the district's policy of establishing school sales quotas--including in elementary schools--has alarmed critics of school commercialism. "This is the first concrete evidence we've had that the soft-drink companies are turning schools into virtual sales agents for their products," says Andrew Hagelshaw, senior program director of the Center for Commercial-free Public Education, a nonprofit group based in Oakland, California. "These kinds of contracts are going to change the priorities from education to soda consumption."

Bushey and other officials deny that the letter was meant to encourage kids to guzzle more Coke. "Our only purpose was to inform people about how the contract works, its incentives and disincentives," said Bob Moore, the district's chief financial officer. A spokesperson for Coca-Cola in Atlanta insisted that the company doesn't have a set quota policy. "It's up to the individual school district," said Coke's Scott Jacobson. "If they want to make more money by selling more product, we'll work with them."

Most teachers in Colorado Springs are apparently willing to work with Coke as well. "We haven't had a single complaint," says Kathy Glasmann, the president of the Colorado Springs Education Association, the local teachers' union. Superintendent Burnley agrees, attributing lack of protest against the corporate-sponsorship program to the "mores" of a community that is heavily Republican, fiscally conservative and strongly opposed to taxes. Plus, says Nancy Haley, a seventh-grade science teacher at a Colorado Springs middle school, "You just don't turn down a deal that will bring $20,000 a year to your school."

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