HEALTHY PORTION OF ADVERTISING; LAS VIRGENES AMONG DISTRICTS WITH MENUS PITCHING FILMS, SHOW.

Byline: Gloria Gonzales Daily News Staff Writer

It looks like a mystery-meat sandwich typical of school lunches, but according to the menu at Sumac Elementary School it's ``Rasputin Rib-B-Cue on a Bartok Bun.''

``It's a beef patty on a whole wheat bun. We also have the Pooka Pineapple Bites,'' said Sherry Falkner, food services director for the Las Virgenes Unified School District, as she watched a group of first-graders line up to grab their $1.85 school lunches. ``The menu says Castle Carrot Coins, but I see we had to substitute salad today, so it doesn't match the menu perfectly.''

In the latest example of advertising on school campuses, teachers at elementary schools in the Las Virgenes district now hand out school menus sporting ads for Saturday morning cartoon shows or the latest animated film.

The menus, once hastily typewritten and copied, are now full-color, fold-out affairs, complete with games, coupons and ads. The practice began in September 1996, but reached a pinnacle of sorts this month with an elaborate promotion for 20th Century Fox's ``Anastasia,'' which opened Friday.

The menu features a cover emblazoned with a scene from Fox's first theatrical animated release. The calendar listing each day's lunch is printed against an ``Anastasia'' backdrop, and two fold-out pages carry depictions of the film's characters.

``We see this as part of a trend of increased advertising on school campuses,'' said Tamara Schwartz, program director for the Oakland-based Center for Commercial Free Education. ``Our organization started as a protest against students being sold as captive audience to advertisers.''

Younger students can be particularly vulnerable, Schwartz said, quoting research showing that elementary school students do not understand how advertising works and may believe that because something is handed out at school, teachers endorse it.

But at Sumac Elementary School, not all teachers and parents are worried about the menus' effect. One parent said she packs her children's lunches and promptly puts the advertising-rich school menu in the recycling bin.

A veteran first-grade teacher said she saw no harm in the menus.

``We hand them out on Fridays, so we never look at them or discuss them in class,'' said Bonnie Ray, who has taught first grade for seven years. ``But I've seen the menus, and I think they're fun and appealing.''

District officials also see no harm in the menus, saying that they conform to the district's advertising guidelines. The district established those guidelines several years ago, after receiving many corporate requests for advertising, said Don Zimring, the district's deputy superintendent.

``Those guidelines don't allow for anything we wouldn't want our children exposed to,'' he said, surveying the lunch crowd at Sumac Elementary on Monday. ``Look around - every lunch box has a movie name on it - this is something these kids see everywhere, and the advertising on the menus is within our guidelines.''

The school district has received only one complaint about the menus, Zimring said.

Falkner, the district's food services director, said the menus encourage kids to eat lunch and save her department the cost of printing school menus.

``This cafeteria is run as a business, and we've broken even for the past seven years - we haven't had to take a penny out of the general fund,'' Falkner said.

Falkner has been using the menus since September 1996, when the school district was first approached by a fledgling advertising company, School Marketing Partners.

Since then, the San Juan Capistrano-based company has supplied 8,000 schools in 40 states with the form of advertising, sending about 4 million schoolchildren home with the colorful menus, according to the company's co-founder, Frank Kohler.

Several districts in Southern California, including Orange, Lancaster, Buena Park and Downey, all use the menus. The Los Angeles Unified School District used the menus at 150 schools for several months last year, but found it logistically difficult to coordinate the printing of 80,000 menus for schools operating on different tracks.

``Logistically, it was a problem,'' said Carol Noelting, a deputy branch manager for food services with the district. ``And we had problems with some of the advertising . . . there was one ad for a credit card . . . that did not seem appropriate for elementary schoolchildren.''

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Photo

PHOTO (color) First-graders Lee Derber, 6, left, and Max Buddenbrock, 6, look at their colorful school menus Monday at Sumac Elementary School.

Tina Gerson/Daily News