Your Name Here: Little Silver Schools Look to Sell Space to Advertisers

Following a presentation at its Feb. 23 meeting, the is considering selling space to advertisers to generate revenue for the district.

Former New York Giant Roman Oben, who now brings community organizations and businesses together as the Northeast Regional Director of Advantage 3, encouraged the board last week to consider joining its roster of participating school districts, which includes .

The board agreed it would hold off on a decision until it received more details about the high school's commitment with Advantage 3 and discuss at its March 15 meeting.

According to Red Bank Regional Business Administrator Christina Galvao, the high school signed an agreement with Advantage 3 last month and is moving forward with an analysis of all the high school's marketable assets.

Little Silver and RBR and part of the Middlesex Middlesex Regional Educational Services Commission Cooperative Purchasing System, which has a contract with Advantage 3.

Other local school districts that have signed contracts to explore selling space to advertisers include Ocean Township, Hazlet, Jackson and Brick, according to Oben.

"We're not looking to turn Little Silver into a bumper sticker for a bank," said Oben during his presentation. He showed examples of how logos could be integrated into a gym by painting a stripe in school colors around the perimeter and picturing a large school mascot and a smaller advertising logo beneath.

Other possible marketable spaces, which would be left at the district's discretion whether to utilize, could include playing fields, trophy case, cafeteria, the district Web site or computer screen savers.

"I think our demographic makes us very attractive," said Little Silver School Business Administrator Amy Lerner.

After an initial outlay for Advantage 3 to perform the demographic and asset study of the district, which would cost $2,500 for and $5,000 for , the district would be matched with local, regional and national sponsors. Oben said the district could expect to generate "double or triple" what the PTO and EFLS raise annually.

Lerner said that it would take between six months and a year for the district to begin to generate revenue from the advertising.

While most board members agreed it was worth the initial cost to perform an analysis of the district's assets that could be used for advertiser logos, not all were in agreement with whether to begin with just Markham or include both schools.

As federal and state aid continues to shrink for many school districts, while operating costs like utilities and insurance premiums continue to rise, school officials are investigating means to generate revenue to pick up the financial slack.

"We have the fiduciary responsibility to at least investigate," said board member Chris Smith.