Corporate Naming Rights may Fund Schools

BROOKLAWN, N.J.-Corporate underwriting has become common at many schools across the country, from yearbook advertisements to company-sponsored sport scoreboards and band uniforms.

Several states have allowed advertising on school buses. Students at Alice Costello School now attend physical education classes at the ShopRite of Brooklawn center and do research at the Flowers Library and Media Center, thanks to the school district’s sale of naming rights. The owner of the local ShopRite supermarket agreed to pay $100,000 over 20 years to have the store’s name posted on the outside of the gym. A spokesperson for the school district said that in the future, the highest bidder on web-based auctions such as eBay could choose a new name for the school.

Some have criticized the school’s corporate naming proposals, but as voters study a planned property tax increase to balance school budgets, the facility is being praised as a model of imaginative fund-raising techniques.

Dan Egreczky, a vice president of the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce, has noted that anything a school can do to be entrepreneurial is a step in the right direction. Superintendent John Kellmayer noted that if New Jersey did more to help the school district of 300 students, such efforts would not have to be considered. Kellmayer also said that a lot of small districts are engaged in fights for economic survival and what Camden is doing will be the norm in 10 years.

Bruce Darrow, school board president, has other ideas, such as placing ads on the sport teams’ jerseys or company logos at the basketball court’s free-throw lanes. His idea of selling naming rights for the entire school is not a new one, but it is rare.

The Belmont-Redwood Shores School District in California is approaching corporate sponsors. A spokeswoman for the superintendent’s office said that companies would not be allowed to completely rename a school, but could add their name to the school’s designation, such as “Central School, sponsored by Intel Corporation.”

A mother of a 13-year-old seventh grader says that she is open to the idea of renaming a school if it benefits the students. A former school board president, Kathleen Maass, however, stated that she would oppose changing Alice Costello School’s name since it honors a former teacher and principal.