February 19, 1997: Adbusting© Adds Life™ to Seattle Schools®

Did you know that Joseph Olchefske® was once an officially licensed and corporately sponsored Punk Rocker™? It's true! Why, he even once owned, as a tentatively disaffected (if admittedly privileged) American teenager, a copy (on vinyl, even!) of the Clash's magically delicious London Calling LP. Gnarly! Seems, though, that there was one song in particular from that set that Billie Joe Olchefske, future free-market savior-in-waiting of Seattle's cash-strapped public K-12 school system, just could never, like, y'know, like, understand--namely, "Koka-Kola," a song which more perceptive punks have immediately understood as a glorious gutting of consumerist culture.

Billie Joe's lesson unlearned (and all magic realism aside), flash-forward to January 1997, when Olchefske, chief financial officer of the Seattle School District, officially defended a brand-new policy allowing corporate advertising and sponsorship in Seattle schools as a source of revenue, speculating, apparently without irony or anxiety, the possibility of "the cheerleaders, brought to you by Reebok," or "the McDonald's gym." Such creeping privatization of public education was at least temporarily suspended on the date in focus here, when Seattle Schools' Superintendent John Stanford, responding to strong and sustained community activist opposition, announced the suspension of the ad-friendly policy, stating, "The [Seattle School Board] has listened to the people."

Much of that opposition was led by Brita Butler-Wall, an activist parent, educator and president of the newly-formed Citizen's Campaign for Commercial-Free Schools, who explained her transition from parent to activist by lamenting that "commercialism somehow crept in when I wasn't watching." The activist victory was tenuous, as attempts by pro-business administrators to commercialize Seattle's K-12 schools would continue over the next few years, enabled especially by Olchefske's ascension to superintendent in February 1999.

The former investment banker sadly resigned in April 2003 due to a major scandal over a $34 million budget shortfall under his watch. Butler-Wall was elected to the school board that same year, eventually becoming its president; she resigned in 2007 after four long years of fighting the pro-business crowd. Rumors that Olchefske currently pays his rent by allowing corporations to tattoo his face with their logos on a temporary and rotating basis remain unconfirmed at press time.

Sources: ETS! archives; Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer archives