Just about every year, school districts raise taxes to keep up with the costly expense of educating our children. Like clockwork, most residents, especially senior citizens on fixed incomes who own their own homes, grumble about the inevitability of the process.

While the price tag of school budgets escalates every year, very often it is to take care of fixed costs or rising benefits such as health care and pensions. Trying to compensate for these increases, school boards often are faced with tough decisions. Sometimes to keep the amount of the tax increase within reason, board members must agree to take money from reserves and/or approve draconian cuts to popular programs such as sports and the arts.

This always results in fierce protests from parents and other residents who overrun school board meetings. Reluctant to face such a backlash, these noncompensated board members look for other ways to raise funds to keep these programs going.

Boards have used the threat of cutting these popular programs as a bargaining chip. Faced with this either-or scenario, residents generally capitulate into approving higher taxes.

Of course, here in Pennsylvania, voters have no official say about budget approval. In New York and other states, voters must approve annual budgets by going to the polls each spring.

In some cases, Pennsylvania schools try to ease the cuts by passing pay-to-play fees, kind of a “user fee.” As you can imagine, this goes over like a lead balloon, especially in those districts where residents are already paying exorbitant school real estate taxes.

About 15 years ago, large corporations began offering school districts sizable sums to feature their products to help with their athletic programs. Key among them are soft drink giants Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola and apparel maker Nike.

The concept is a simple one: Feature our product exclusively in your district, and we will pay you an annual fee. Many school officials were thrilled. “Where do we sign?” they asked.

The latest deal locally came up last week. It has Lehigh Valley Health Network proposing to contribute $1.5 million to the East Penn School District in Emmaus, Lehigh County, over 10 years to give the regional health care giant a significant presence at sporting events with logos on the scoreboard, game tickets and in the gymnasium. There is a lot more it would get, and, of course, LVHN demands exclusivity if the deal goes through.

The district would use the money to pay for a new scoreboard on the high school football field and a new synthetic turf. If the board approves the proposal by June 30, the district would get a $50,000 “signing bonus.”

But not everyone likes the idea of the commercialization of school grounds. Some educators and parents contend that the concept of encouraging students to drink sugary drinks such as Coke and Pepsi undermines the nutrition message that schools have been trying to send.

Private, parochial and charter schools, where sponsorships are more common, do not have many of the pressures that public school boards face in making these decisions. In fact, in many of those schools, athletic directors have the autonomy to make decisions on their own without public discussion.

Quite a few local schools began accepting corporate sponsorships several years ago. In some cases, there was mild opposition, but now that the trend has been growing and because of the need to cover growing costs because of increased athletic participation, this method of partial funding has become more acceptable.

Alex Molnar, lead author in a research report for the National Education Policy Center, warned that these businesses are “not there for the kids. “They are there for themselves; they are there to make money,” Molnar said.

The report also claims that the missions of schools and the goals of corporations are at odds with one another.

Some critics of corporate sponsorships say that schools are finding it more difficult to know where the line needs to be drawn between marketing and education. “Commercialism in schools brings up many legal and ethical questions,” according to the Center for Commercial-Free Public Education. Who owns the school when it is sponsored by a particular company? Who controls the curriculum? What kind of long-term effects will these programs have over teaching and freedom of speech in the classroom?

Some of these questions may seem far-fetched, but I see them as relevant in safeguarding the sanctity of our schools to make sure that decisions are made in the best interest of our children, not in the best interest of sponsoring corporations.

By Bruce Frassinelli | tneditor@tnonline.com