Schools may allow advertising on students' lockers. And on the walls. And on the floor.

I'm absolutely appalled by this.

School lockers are becoming the latest venue for bombarding kids with advertising.

Just what that will look like is on display at the north suburban Centennial school administration building: four lockers wrapped in a bubblegum pink ad for the Mall of America's "Underwater Adventures" aquarium.

On Nov. 1, the school board is slated to decide whether it will allow the ads on up to 10 percent of the available surfaces in all of the district's seven schools. That includes lockers, walls and floors. The take for the district? $184,000 a year.

In a bleak economy, with dim prospects for any new state school funding, Centennial -- with $3.6 million in cuts this year and more likely on the way next year -- is just the latest school district looking at the ads as an alternative way to generate some cash. Paul Miller, president of Coon Rapids-based School Media's, the company that would install the ads, said he expects to have nine Twin Cities school districts signed up by the end of the year.

The rest of the story is at the StarTribune.

Addendum:  Reposted from 2010 to add this variation on the theme -

And on school buses 

Last year USA Today and the New York Times reported that some school districts were planning to sell advertising space on school buses.

Utah became the latest state to allow school bus advertising when its governor signed a law last month authorizing the practice. The strategy began in the 1990s in Colorado, then spread to Texas, Arizona, Tennessee and Massachusetts. In the last year, at least eight other states have considered similar legislation. One of them, New Jersey, approved school bus advertising in January...

Districts with 250 buses can expect to generate about $1 million over four years by selling some yellow space... Officials say that the revenue, while small, can still make the difference between having new textbooks — or a music teacher or a volleyball team — and not having them.

More at the links.  I'll step aside and let those of you with school-age children debate the merits or downsides of these changes.

Photo credit:  Matthew Staver.