Angela's famous!

Angela was on the news and in print yesterday. Take a look:

http://www.kivitv.com/Global/story.asp?S=14045955


KIVI TODAY'S 6 NEWS
Meridian Campaigns to Put Ads on School Buses; Plan Could Raise $1 Million

The yellow school bus: It's an image as American as apple pie or the baseball. And it's one that hasn't changed since--well, ever.

The cool kids still sit in the back. Forrest Gump still isn't getting a seat. And the yellow school bus is still just a plain old yellow school bus.

But here in Idaho, that could be changing.

"I've been at this 12 years," said Eric Exline, spokesman for the Meridian School District. "I don't ever remember anybody proposing doing this."

The Meridian School District and Sen. Chuck Winder want to put advertisements on the state's school buses.

"[It's] a means of generating revenue without raising taxes," Exline said.

That sounds pretty good to Angela Spear. She's a mother of three and the PTA president at Sienna K-8. She says if it makes class sizes smaller, she's all for school bus billboards.

"My bigger concern," Spear said, "would be that my kids would come home wanting whatever's on the side of the bus."

Meridian parents probably wouldn't be too fired up about their kids' school buses driving around carrying advertisements for soft drinks or shoot 'em up movies (never mind light beer or menthol cigarettes). That's why the Meridian School District says it's targeting educational advertisers. Those ads could bring in as much as $1 million.

"You can raise a significant amount of money," Exline said.

Well, the Meridian School District certainly needs money. It's slashed bunches of bus-routes in the last year.

But school buses look the way they do for a reason: You see that yellow Blue Bird and you know it's carrying kids. Some worry that by adding ads, it'll look like just another bus. Spear and the school district say, there's little chance of that.

"I really don't think anyone's going to say: ‘Oh, look at that. That's not a school bus,'" Spear said. "I think they're pretty obvious what they are."

"These are still going to look like yellow school buses," Exline said.

Sounds like those same clunky buses with the pleather seats, authoritative drivers and, of course, marigold-yellow exteriors won't be going anywhere. Only now, along with kids, they'll be picking up some extra cash for the district's general fund.