School breaks ties with sports poster company
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TweetHaines Borough School District is discontinuing a contract with a Lower 48 sports merchandise company and notifying residents that the district no longer receives money from ads that local businesses are offered.
All Around Sports of Boise, Idaho has been soliciting businesses in recent weeks to purchase advertising on T-shirts, saying that the ads would help fund athletics in the Haines school district.
The company’s website says, “At All Around Sports, our primary goal is to partner with schools to help them fund their athletic programs while providing inexpensive advertising solutions for the local merchants who support those schools. Schools get our products free of charge and receive funds to help support their sports programs.”
Tiana Taylor, Haines School athletic director, said the school recently ended a three-year contract with the company, which had provided the school with sports calendars and T-shirts as well as “rebate” checks to benefit the athletic department.
All Around Sports general manager Kristin Deboer said the company has sent one check a year to the district since September 2013 and will send the last check of the contract this coming September to round out the 2016/2017 school year.
Principal Rene Martin said the checks were for about $1,000 and went to the student council each year.
The school district posted on its Facebook page March 17, “FYI - Businesses - We are not affiliated with All Around or All American Sports. If you get a request for advertising from them, all the money will go to the company. No money will be donated to Haines Borough Schools from All Around or All American Sports.”
Taylor said the school is no longer contracting with All Around Sports so the district can choose a local provider. She said there is already local interest.
Martin added that planning calendar dates for sporting events so far in the future to make the company’s printing deadline caused too many dates on the calendars to be incorrect. She said ad prices were also pretty steep.
school board member and Olerud’s Market manager Sarah Swinton said the company has been calling her for years asking her to purchase a $600 ad. “I’d rather give $600 right to the school,” Swinton said.
All-Around Sports told a CVN reporter that its ads cost between $275 and $700.
Resident Sheri Loomis used to put together the sports calendars with her former business Loomis Litho. She said students in a publications class would solicit ads from local businesses for about $40 an inch and collect the money for the school.
Loomis would layout and design the calendar and send it to be printed in Juneau. She estimated printing to cost around $300, and the school made about $1,500 from the effort each year.
