In return, board member Allison Niday said, companies will get plaques to advertise their help, or mentions in school newspapers.

Similar deals are being made across the country at all levels of education as money-strapped schools increasingly turn to companies for financial support.

"First and foremost, our schools are struggling," the National School Boards Association's Dan Fuller said. "Many districts are engaged in this (commercialism) because of the dire straits they're in. This presents a real opportunity and a trend that will continue and possibly grow."

As a result, corporate advertisements are cropping up on everything from high-school scoreboards to the sides of school buses.

And soft drinks are being sold under contract in many schools.

In Seattle, the school district — its budget so tight that nearly 200 staffers had to be cut — has renewed an exclusive deal with Coca-Cola Co. for vending machines in middle and high schools. The five-year contract, worth more than $1.5 million for the district, helps pay for field trips, school newspapers and extracurricular activities.

Just a few months ago, the makers of Snapple won exclusive rights to sell their fruit juices in vending machines on all city property in New York, including schools. Snapple will pay $106 million and spend $60 million more to promote the city over the five-year contract. The city's public-school system is the nation's largest, with 1,200 schools and 1.1 million students.

Critics say such deals erode the schools' long-held ability to insulate children from marketing and promote a climate where children are being asked to pay for education one soda at a time. And the sale of soft drinks in school, they argue, may add to child obesity.

During the 1990s, the number of exclusive corporation-school marketing deals jumped 13-fold while the number of sponsored educational materials supplied by big business or trade groups grew 18-fold, according to a 2000 study by Arizona State University.