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School district boosts ad push

Revenue to help offset support costs
Durango School District 9-R is expanding opportunities for advertising from its Meal Calendar, which is almost sold out for the coming school year, to its print and electronic newsletters, website and Student and Family Success Guide. Money raised will help pay for printing and distribution of district publications, and revenue from signs on buses will help offset transportation costs.

It’s no secret Durango School District 9-R is operating on a tight budget.

On Thursday, the board of education approved its fourth consecutive budget that will require deficit spending, although it was able to avoid cutting any jobs for the upcoming school year.

The district has been looking at other avenues to bring in revenue, and one – selling advertising on its printed publications – will be expanded during the 2015-16 school year after a test run on the Meal Calendar.

“We keep getting mandates to do more,” said Julie Popp, public information officer for 9-R, “mandates for more testing, mandates to increase technology training, but mandates with no additional money added, so we’ve had a vicious cycle of cuts each year. Printing these required policy publications takes from one-quarter to one-third of my budget, so if I can get those paid for by ads, the budgeted money can go back into the classroom.”

In addition to the calendar, which only has two banner ad spaces and the pullout remaining to be sold, ad space will be available on the district website, in electronic newsletters and in the printed publications Student and Family Success Guide and The 9-R Communicator. Popp is planning a new rate card for the various spaces in the different media.

The calendar, she said, is going to bring in about $4,750 and costs about $3,800 to print, so it will actually turn a small profit.

“We’ve seen a larger engagement from the community and a larger showing of support for the schools,” Popp said about the success of the advertising to date.

The district has also sold signs on the side of school buses to Fort Lewis College and may consider more.

“We always lose money on transportation,” Popp said. “Some districts are charging $1 a trip, but we do not want to do that to our families. Those signs help offset that loss.”

School District 9-R is actually behind the curve in selling advertisers access to parents. Colorado schools on the Front Range were the first in the nation to take the step, starting with El Paso County School District 11 in Colorado Springs in 1994.

At that time, it had frozen teachers’ salaries for three years, and voters had not approved a bond issue or tax increase since 1972. District 11 didn’t just sell ad space in publications going to parents, it sold space on school and stadium walls, maps and warm-up jackets for sports teams. Signs went up in all 50 of the district’s schools and on many buses.

Jefferson County School District, working to close a $70 million budget gap in 2011, sold ads on the bottom of the report cards that students in its 92 elementary schools took home to their parents. Those ads, for CollegeInvest, Colorado’s nonprofit education savings plan, brought in about $90,000 over three years. Jeffco, which serves more than 86,000 students, also raised $500,000 over four years through a deal with a local bank that put signs on all its buses.

School District 9-R has a policy on the types of ads it will accept.

“We try to only include items of value or service to all families, so we prefer to not feature liquor ads, political ads, religious ads or anything of that nature,” Popp said. “Ads should be inclusive and accessible to all families.”

abutler@durangoherald.com



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