School board considers selling naming rights
The Fairfax County School Board unanimously approved a motion to consider selling naming rights for athletic facilities.
The motion, proposed by school board members Kyle McDaniel (at-large) and Mateo Dunne (Mount Vernon), calls for the superintendent to draft a proposal on naming rights opportunities by July.
“Pursuing naming rights is a very common approach for public school systems to generate revenue targeted to facility maintenance and improvement,” McDaniel said. “With a $400 million maintenance backlog, it’s important that we pursue all available resources to help ensure our students and community members are in facilities that meet our expectations.”
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Noting that the deferred maintenance backlog is growing by 8 percent a year, Dunne said, “We need to bring in more revenue sources, especially those that don’t raise property taxes.”
Selling naming rights would not only bring in money, Dunne said; it would also expand partnerships with businesses for things like apprenticeship programs and support for career and technical education.
Mason school board member Ricardy Anderson suggested that if the naming rights proposal moves forward, the revenue should benefit all schools.
I hope this does not pass. I don’t want literally every thing to be an advertisement opportunity for corporations. Can we carve out a space for our children to be free from corporate sponsorship?
Allowing businesses to advertise directly to children in public school facilities isn’t a funding solution — it’s a values problem. There are better ways to address the backlog than selling access to our kids.
Agree with other commenters – this feels very gross, especially when public education is supposed to be available through public funding, which entitles everyone in the public access. Slapping corporate logos and rich-people names on everything is one more step towards eroding a prosocial, publicly accessible education system.
Isn’t Kyle McDaniel accused of embezzling money during Covid? Now he wants to give us Cialis High School?