This post is from from my other blog here

Some good ideas are rolling over at Too Conservative regarding school budget help...here's another, start using advertising to raise additional revenue. This idea's got traction in government context at the city level already with mass transit, and many towns across the country are beginning to do it...i.e. soliciting advertisers for school property venues (like gymnasiums), school buses, textbooks and internet properties. Thousands of parents and the general public interact, intentionally or not, with school system property every day - providing, therefore, many opportunities for hungry advertisters seeking more vertical markets. Heck, just include Adsense banners across the LCPS site (these can be managed closely); might raise a few thousand here and there (from parents!). Furthermore, advertiser intake could be moderated to specifically support Loudoun businesses, helping ensure local economic benefit for not only the schools, but also for local businesses.

So long as a rigorous policy is created for accepting and moderating advertising, with public comment (for example no advertising associated with junk food), there's little reason why the school system needs to hold out and deny itself revenue that's symbiotic with the larger economic context.

This, by the way, is an example of the underlying tenets governing the practice of "Information Technology Investment Management", where every investment in an enterprise's IT systems, people and processes is scrutinized to (1) understand whether it can be reused or leveraged elsewhere in the organization, and (2) to understand if other enterprise investments may already be able to provide the outcomes needed. Across the Loudoun County government, this kind of "cross-domain" investment management, i.e. an advertising program in the school system supporting the interests (for example) of the Department of Economic Development, is a real opportunity waiting to be exploited.