Health scourge of soda?
This Toledo Blade editorial was interesting, yet the irony struck me:
The fine print in the 10-year marketing agreements most school districts signed with soft-drink bottlers requires big paybacks if the contracts are altered, making immediate change financially impractical.
This was true in Portland, Ore., where school officials realized that eliminating diet soda and sports drinks from vending machines and cafeterias would cost the district $600,000 of the $1.2 million it received from the local bottler.
In Racine, Wis., the schools abandoned a plan to remove high-calorie drinks after officials discovered it would cost $200,000. Now they have to wait until the pact expires in 2010. Thus, even though they want to do right by their students, and get rid of the health scourge of soda in schools, districts are being stymied.
Where’s the irony? The fact that the reasons these school systems entered into contracts with these soft drink companies was to profit from the very students now affected by the “health scourge”.
I don’t know what the policy is at Toledo’s other schools, but I am happy to report that my daughter’s school appears to be free from the horrors of soft drinks…
“Thus, even though they want to do right by their students, and get rid of the health scourge of soda in schools, districts are being stymied”
Let’s see, the districts sign multi-year deals to exclusively sell a certain brand of soda in the schools in exchange for lots of money. The schools change their minds and according to the Blade the soda companies are supposed to just rip of the deals. That’s a really great lesson to teach our students.
April 3rd, 2007 at 9:32 amThat would be about how I saw this whole situation.
April 3rd, 2007 at 9:36 amThe other lesson for the school boards and students would be read the fine print;
“The fine print in the 10-year marketing agreements most school districts signed with soft-drink bottlers requires big paybacks if the contracts are altered, making immediate change financially impractical.”
April 3rd, 2007 at 9:48 amI suspect those paybacks are in the same sized print as everything else. These days anything inconvenient in a contract must be in the “fine print”.
April 3rd, 2007 at 11:07 amI believe that TPS has already been through that and waited the contract out; they couldn’t afford not to.
Now, I believe that they actually read the current one, before signing it and made some changes.
April 3rd, 2007 at 12:49 pm