The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
School group buys Super Bowl ad
A group that runs seven Connecticut public magnet schools spent $65,000 on a Super Bowl commercial in an effort to recruit students, a school representative confirmed, raising questions over whether those funds should be used for marketing public schools and highlighting what some say is a need for increased transparency.
The commercial, seen regionally in Connecticut, advertised schools run by Area Cooperative Educational Services. ACES,
as it is known, runs seven schools in Connecticut, each with a different focus.
“The purpose of the advertisement was to make parents and students aware of school choice and our ACES’ magnet schools, and to recruit students to our magnet schools,” ACES spokesman Tom Danehy said by email.
The commercial ran during the 2023 Super Bowl on Feb. 11, and it may have served its intended function. Students must apply to a lottery in order to attend magnet schools in Connecticut, and Danehy said ACES’
lottery closed at the end of February.
“The desired goal was met as our application pool increased significantly in each of the three magnet schools the next day,” he said.
Magnet schools are public schools in Connecticut, receiving money from the state, local municipalities and federal sources.
In a recent opinion piece that appeared in Hearst Connecticut newspapers, legislative leaders said more transparency around school spending was needed, specifically mentioning the Super
Bowl commercial and a Steinway piano purchased at Greenwich High School.
“School expenses like purchasing a new Steinway grand piano, duplicative overhead and administration, and television advertisements during a Super Bowl will receive the sunlight and public scrutiny they deserve,” State Senate President Pro Tempore Martin M. Looney (D-New Haven) and Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff wrote.
The $141,000 piano was paid for by the Board of Education and community members, according to local reporting.
Duff and Looney have introduced a bill Looney said was intended to increase transparency in school spending.
“We want to make sure that they have the resources they need, but at the same time that they need to be fully accountable for the choices they make and how the money is spent,” Looney said.
Looney said that when he saw the Super Bowl commercial, “I thought, ‘That must have been pretty expensive,’ ” though he noted it was not a national ad buy. “Luckily they
didn’t spend several million. That’s what a national ad would have cost.”
In 2021, the most recent year for which data was available, ACES spent $39,628 per pupil, $31,940 of which came from local sources, $6,974 of which was paid by the state with the remaining per-pupil expenditures funded by federal and other sources, according to the state Department of Education.
“The state reimburses magnet schools per pupil, but if the school is not run by a traditional district, the operator of a magnet school may charge the district where a student resides a minimal tuition to make up the difference between the state reimbursement and the cost of educating a student,” the Connecticut Coalition for Magnet Schools explains on their website.
Danehy said ACES’ total annual budget is $110 million, with marketing and information making up about 1% of the total, $1,179,456.
Though she said she’s “very much in favor of magnet schools,” specifically for “equity and diversity,” Connecticut Association of Public School Superintendents President Fran Rabinowitz noted that public schools “don’t have marketing budgets.”
“I couldn’t afford to have a PR person when I was in Bridgeport, we didn’t have the funding for it,” said Rabinowitz who was a teacher, administrator and interim school superintendent in Bridgeport public schools. “Maybe we all need to have marketing budgets, where we talk about the good things that our schools are doing.”
Several school districts have since added a communications or public relations staff member, although many do not have such roles.
Though she said all schools might benefit fro mm arketing, Rabinowitz questioned what she would have done with $1 million.
“If I were given the money tomorrow, I’m not sure I would have spent it for marketing anyway,” she said. “I would have spent it for reading or intervention, or whatever.”