Product advertising adorns school hallways, lockers, buses, scoreboards and much more. Teachers use corporate-sponsored materials in their classrooms. Schools enter into exclusive agreements with soda companies to sell their products on school grounds. Corporations, both for-profit and nonprofit, often subsidize school events.

We see it across the five-county Times News region, and as districts beat the bushes looking for funding through nontraditional sources, the practice is growing.

The Lehighton Area School District has a contract with Lehigh Valley Health Network in which it provides a variety of services for students and staff in exchange for “equivalent marketing and promotional opportunities.”

LVHN agreed to pay the district a “loyalty partner sponsorship” of $100,000 when the deal was signed in 2020 and will pay another $25,000 in year three of the contract. LVHN also will pay an annual $50,000 sponsorship agreement for an initial term of five years after which an optional additional two years at the same annual rate is possible if both parties agree.

LVHN was among the first to partner with an area district - East Penn (Emmaus) in Lehigh County in 2018 - when in exchange for a $1.5 million 10-year agreement, the network’s logo would receive prominent placement on scoreboards, tickets, in the gyms, on the football field and other high visibility venues.

Here are some examples involving LVHN’s main competitor, St. Luke’s University Health Network:

• In the Pleasant Valley district, St. Luke’s has a 10-year, $1.2 million contract with the school involving sports medicine and sponsorship of various projects, events and school entities. In return, St. Luke’s gets name recognition with the goal of earning good will from the Pleasant Valley community and others who see the name affiliation.

• St. Luke’s has a similar 10-year agreement with the Palmerton Area School District, this one for $736,500. St. Luke’s provides in-kind sports medicine, behavioral health and occupational medicine services and donations, along with comprehensive health care services for students and employees.

• St. Luke’s has an $8.9 million sponsorship deal with the Easton Area School District which provides similar services and some special services involving the district’s fitness center.

Some districts, such as Parkland in Lehigh County, have even gone so far as to post dedicated pages offering sponsorship opportunities. The Parkland page, for example, says, “This page lists the many ways - 13 - that are available for our community to support Parkland’s teachers, students and families via sponsorship and marketing opportunities that allow you to showcase your business.”

Although mega medical health networks such as St. Luke’s and Lehigh Valley Health Network are nonprofits, there are many similar relationships between school districts and for-profit companies.

This started decades ago when Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola began vying for naming and sponsorship rights in exchange for huge cash payments to financially strapped school districts.

Since then, this commercialization of the public education system has concerned educators wondering what impact it has on students, who, like many adults, probably believe that advertising doesn’t influence their attitudes and behaviors, but researchers say it does. This may explain why companies in the food and beverage industry alone spend more than $2 billion annually marketing to children and students.

Study teams from the universities of Michigan and Illinois found that 70% of elementary students and 90% of secondary students are exposed to daily advertising of these products in their schools. Some of these relationships went beyond passive advertising. Before the COVID-19 pandemic curtailed such activities, events such as “McTeacher Night” successfully raised funds for school projects including band uniforms. In this type of event, teachers served up hamburgers, french fries and soda to their students at the local McDonald’s.

Critics contend that the promotion of events such as this at fast food franchises ignores the nutritional issues associated with the consumption of the products dispensed at McDonald’s, Burger King and other fast food outlets. As one mother who encourages healthy eating for her daughter put it, “The last thing she needs is her teachers hawking junk food.”

Faith Boninger, a researcher with the University of Colorado, said advertising is such a major part of our culture that people just shrug it off and rationalize what happens in schools as “so what’s the big deal” if kids are inundated with it pervasively and daily. In commenting on this issue, the American Psychological Association said that students are a captive audience and can’t hit an “off” switch as they might at home.

So why have schools gone down this slippery slope? It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? They are desperate for money. Districts that are strapped for cash beat the bushes constantly looking for new and inventive sources of income.

There are weaker regulatory limitations on advertising in schools, so when corporations - both nonprofit and for-profit - come calling with wheelbarrows filled with cash, some board members take the attitude that this is “manna from heaven,” “a no-brainer,” an opportunity not to be missed.

The question comes down to whether the benefits outweigh what the districts give up in return for these associations, and that seems to be a perennial question being debated by school administrators, school board members, parents and the general public.

By Bruce Frassinelli | tneditor@tnonline.com

The foregoing opinions do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editorial Board or Times News LLC.