School District Looks to Web for New Revenues

The Sarasota County School Board agreed Tuesday to direct staff to further explore online sponsorship sales on the district’s website and to explore creating a district-wide policy.

Much of the ads, partnerships and sponsorships the district currently has are done at the school level, while almost none of that activity happens district wide.

Tanice Knopp, specialist for the Partnerships and Alliances community board, told school board members that in order to sell sponsorships online, the district needs to develop an online business connection system. “My job was to investigate that and to find funding to support that project,” Knopp said.

Communications Director Gary Leatherman said the purpose of the workshop item was to discuss posting an acknowledgement on the district's website that included a logo of the Achieva Credit Union. Achieva is sponsoring the development of an online system that would help the district match resources in the business community to needs in schools.

To mitigate staff time and not hire an extra position, Knopp said the district needs an online form for businesses to connect directly to the district. This elimination of the middleman, she added, is crucial for an agreement to move forward. With a dwindling budget climate, finding funds to hire any new staff could be the holdup to creating a tool to generate revenue, she said.

In these preliminary policy discussions, Superintendent Lori White said the district would be looking to other districts in the state to see what has worked with online sales. At Tuesday’s meeting White was looking for direction from the board on how the district should proceed.

Gary Leatherman said the first hurdle the district must tackle is distinguishing the school and district-level online sale policies.

“Schools have partnerships with commercial entities through the [current] partnership policies,” he said. “People in the business community, [however,] didn’t have a clear idea of how to approach the district. The first issue that we talked about is how to develop that first point of contact.”

When/if an online sales policy is in place, Leatherman said it could run similarly to NPR’s or PBS’ ‘sponsor acknowledgement’ advertising.

“I need to get a read of where the board is to take that next step,” White said.

Board member Carol Todd was the vocal minority on the issue. She said she does not believe in selling public education. While the district may “dress up” the word/policy as ‘sponsorships’, she says it is still advertising. “There are things in the policy that I do not agree with,” she said. “[I] think it is a thin veil between sponsorship and advertising.

“When you see an entity advertised on our website, for the general public who goes [to the site], the first thing they would see is the logo of a commercial organization,” Todd said. “It has the appearance that it is something we support.”

Vice Chair Caroline Zucker said rejecting a potential revenue stream would be foolish during an economic downfall. “Knowing our budget situation, I’m sure our staff will come up with policies that will cover us,” Zucker said.

“Commercialization of public education is deplorable,” Todd said. “It’s a sad day when we have to sit here and go out to get the people to advertise to get people to support public education. This is one change that I have not supported in the past and will not support moving forward.”

Zucker said the alternative could be worse. “Commercialization of public schools is better than the elimination of public education,” she said.

Trying to bring the discussion back to objectives at hand, White said she understands the concerns but the board was not being asked to create a policy that day, just agree to explore the possibility further.

“Sponsorship versus advertising, it is an important discussion to have,” White said. “It certainly is a policy issue. It’s only going to get larger as [opportunities] become available.”

Ultimately, the board agreed to advance discussions on the issue. The board directed staff to return for further discussion of the partnerships, sponsorships and advertising sales. An agenda item regarding the agreement between the district and the Achieva Credit Union is scheduled for the first board meeting in September.

Zucker said the district must push forward on new revenue streams. She said the loss of federal and state dollars, coupled with the loss of dollars the voted millage brings in, only heightens the need. “My concern is that there is no guarantee that our referendum will continue,” she said. “We need to be able to stand on our own so that we always don’t have to depend on the referendum. We realize that it is a gift.”