Hungry for new means of generating funding for their programs, schools have become partners with major corporations. One increasingly popular source of funds is an exclusive contract that a district can sign with a soft drink company. The companies provide money in exchange for the sole right to sell their products in campus soda machines and cafeterias. In addition, many schools have allowed companies to place snack food--i.e., junk food--vending machines around campuses.

A growing number of critics say this type of commercialism not only sends the wrong message to students but also, and more important, is hazardous to their health. Health officials believe that the push for soft drinks and junk food, with their empty calories, works against efforts to promote healthy diets among youth.

Those health risks are at the heart of a resolution AFT convention delegates passed in July. The resolution promotes "the use of methods of fundraising that don't force schools to choose between important extracurricular programs and healthy students." The resolution discusses the need to deal with the increasing problem of overweight children by promoting "comprehensive nutrition education programs in schools."

The issue also received attention earlier in the summer when five leading medical associations, along with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (which administers school nutrition programs), called on schools to ban vending machines and junk food in school cafeterias. The groups are responding to what they call the "epidemic of 4.7 million youths, ages 6 to 17, who are overweight or obese." They want schools to promote a healthy lifestyle by teaching students the importance of balanced diets and physical fitness.

Linda Ulrich-Hagner, a family and consumer science teacher at Kenmore (N.Y.) West High School and member of the Kenmore Teachers Association, has tried to educate her community about the contradictory messages school officials send. The battle in her high school is over soft drink machines. Hagner says she sees students drink a soda for breakfast and then have the same "meal" for lunch. "I just could not believe it," she says.

These health concerns are no trivial matter when it comes to the nutrition habits of adolescents, and especially young girls. Hagner cites studies that show that young women who opt for the empty calories of soda and similar beverages increase their health risks. In one study, a Harvard professor surveyed 460 ninth- and 10th-grade girls about their soft drink consumption, their physical activity and whether they had ever broken a bone. The researcher found that girls who drank carbonated beverages were three times more likely to have broken a bone than their non-soda-drinking counterparts.

In Kenmore, Hagner and her allies have so far been unsuccessful in getting soda machines out of the schools. Her district faces a common dilemma: Parents and school administrators want the best education for their kids, but the public is reluctant to pay more taxes for it. When school districts lack funds for sports and other student activities, they find it hard to resist the lure of "free" money from corporate partners.

But Hagner, for one, doesn't like the tradeoff. "I feel that the school districts are selling their souls for a dollar," she says.