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Pizza Hut set up its “Book-It!” program to encourage children to read. When students meet the monthly reading goal, they are rewarded with a certificate for a Pizza Hut personal pan pizza. At the restaurant, the store manager personally congratulates the children and gives them each a sticker and a certificate. Pizza Hut suggests school principals place a “Pizza Hut Book-It!” honor roll list in the school for everyone to see.

General Mills and Campbell’s Soup thought up a better plan. Instead of giving free rewards, they both have programs rewarding schools for getting parents to buy their products. Under General Mills’s “Box Tops for Education” program, schools get ten cents for each box top logo they send in, and can earn up to $10,000 a year. That’s 100,000 General Mills products sold. Campbell’s Soup’s “Labels for Education” program is no better. It touts itself as “Providing America’s children with FREE school equipment!” Schools can earn one “free” Apple iMac computer for only 94,950 soup labels. Campbell’s suggests setting a goal of a label a day from each student. With Campbell’s conservative estimate of five labels per week per child, all you need is a school of 528 kids to get that free computer.

It’s not just this kind of sponsorship that brings these schools and corporations together. The 1990s saw a phenomenal 1,384 percent increase in exclusive agreements between schools and soft-drink bottlers. Two hundred and forty school districts in thirty-one states have sold exclusive rights to one of the big three soda companies (Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Dr. Pepper) to push their products in schools. Anybody wonder why there are more overweight kids than ever before? Or more young women with calcium deficiencies because they’re drinking less milk? And even though federal law prohibits the sale of soft drinks in schools until lunch periods begin, in some overcrowded schools “lunch” begins in midmorning. Artificially flavored carbonated sugar water—the breakfast of champions! (In March 2001 Coke responded to public pressure, announcing that it would add water, juice, and other sugar-free, caffeine-free, and calcium-rich alternatives to soda to its school vending machines.)

I guess they can afford such concessions when you consider their deal with the Colorado Springs school district. Colorado has been a trailblazer when it comes to tie-ins between e schools and soft drink companies. In Colorado Springs, the district will receive $8.4 million over ten years from its deal with Coca-Cola—and more if it exceeds its “requirement” of selling seventy thousand cases of Coke products a year. To ensure e levels are met, school district officials urged principals to allow students unlimited access to Coke machines and allow students to drink Coke in the classroom.

But Coke isn’t alone. In the Jefferson County, Colorado, school district (home of Columbine High School), Pepsi contributed $1.5 million to help build a new sports stadium. Some county schools tested a science course, developed in part by Pepsi, called “The Carbonated Beverage Company.” Students taste-tested colas, analyzed cola samples, watched a video tour of a Pepsi bottling plant, and visited a local plant.

The school district in Wylie, Texas, signed a deal in 1996 that shared the rights to sell soft drinks in the schools between Coke and Dr. Pepper. Each company paid $31,000 a year. Then, in 1998,the county changed its mind and signed a deal with Coke worth $1.2 million over fifteen years. Dr. Pepper sued the county for breach of contract. The school district bought out Dr. Pepper’s contract, costing them $160,000—plus another $20,000 in legal fees.

It’s not just the companies that sometimes get sent packing. Students who lack the proper corporate school spirit do so at considerable risk. When Mike Cameron wore a Pepsi shirt on “Coke Day” at Greenbrier High School in Evans, Georgia, he was suspended for a day. “Coke Day” was part of the school’s entry in a national “Team