Bus Advertisements—A New Source of Revenue?

The is looking at new options for increasing revenue—and one of those options may be advertising.

Board of education member Lynne Hurley announced at the Feb. 8 meeting that the finance committee has been considering increasing revenue through advertising at athletic fields.

“We could maybe do signs on fences,” she said.

The other option Hurley presented as discussed by the finance committee was a new regulation that allows for placing advertising on buses.

“We have concerns about that, but it is something we will discuss,” she said.

According to business administrator Peter Starrs, Gov. Chris Christie recently passed a bill that allows school districts to place advertisements on buses. At this point, he said, he does not know of any other districts that have done so because rules and regulations of the new bill have not yet been outlined.

The bill does state that 50 percent of the revenue that comes from the advertising that could be placed on the outside of school buses must be used for fuel costs, and the rest could be used for district programs and services.

Starrs said the district has not discussed the specifics of either option for advertising.

“Our district is investigating and researching about placing ads on ball fields, but has not spoken about specifics,” he said.

For now, Starrs said, these options are just ideas the district is looking into as ways of generating revenue.

“The district is looking at alternate sources of revenue,” he said.