Schools Serving Up Ads on Lunch Menus : Marketing: L.A. firm offers free printing in exchange for adding coupons. Some parents are outraged.

When school children ask what’s on the menu, the answer soon may be coupons for snack foods and free T-shirt offers.

Some of the nation’s largest marketers have teamed with a Los Angeles company to provide schools with free monthly lunch menus in exchange for allowing ads on them. The arrangement would save schools thousands of dollars in annual printing costs.

In a test last month, children in eight school districts brought home booklets containing a school lunch menu and coupons for discounts on products from Procter & Gamble Co., General Mills Inc. and Walt Disney Co. School lunch directors said reaction from children was favorable.

“They thought the coupon for ‘The Santa Clause’ video was cool,” said Dan Johnson, a school food service director in Kent, Wash., referring to the Disney movie.

The plan is another example of how schools are opening the door to advertising in return for much-needed financial support. To raise money for equipment, schools around the country are accepting advertising in sports stadiums and on school buses.

Consumer advocates and some educators are disturbed by the trend because it allows marketers to leverage the influence schools have over children and their parents.

“Schools are a public trust,” said Mary Ann Manilove, director of Unplug, an Oakland-based consumer organization. “Corporations should not be buying their way into schools.”

Gina Kohler, a representative of Your Favorite Producers Inc. of Los Angeles--which produced the menus--said that in addition to saving schools money, the menus help schools promote their lunch programs. Schools want to sell as many lunches as possible to cover the cost of providing the meals.

“Schools came to us and asked if there wasn’t some way to make the menu more exciting,” Kohler said.

Other than promoting lunch, the menu also helps pitch a line of shakes and juice drinks that Your Favorite Producers sells through schools. The menu highlights days when the drinks are available.

Menus were distributed to 150,000 students last month in San Francisco and seven other Western cities. The menu had coupons for eight items, including Hunt’s pudding snacks, Duncan Hines’ “kids cups” cake mixes and General Mills’ Dunkaroos cream cookies. There was also a free T-shirt offer from the marketers of Florida orange juice.

Most of the reaction from parents was favorable, Kohler said, though some parents objected to the coupons for “junk foods.”

“We got some complaints that the foods had too high sugar content, and that is something that we are keeping in mind for the next time,” she said.

A second test, to include 2 million students, is planned for next April. Talks are under way with Pillsbury Co. and Time Warner Inc. for that round.

At the San Francisco Unified School District, school food service director Gayla Pierce received complaints from parents who said that the coupons were “inappropriately teaching kids to be consumers.” An elementary school teacher with impoverished students said the coupon for “The Santa Clause” videotape unfairly tantalized children whose families don’t own VCRs, Pierce said.

“There’s some validity to that kind of comment,” Pierce said.