MISHAWAKA — With a $300,000 pledge from Teachers Credit Union this week, Mishawaka schools became the latest to sell naming rights to their facilities, promising to name a new technology space at John Young Middle School the "TCU Innovation Lab."
The agreement, approved Tuesday by School City of Mishawaka's board, put the district among a growing number of schools to offer corporate sponsorships, often for football fields and other athletic facilities.
The agreement calls for TCU to pay the Mishawaka Education Foundation $30,000 a year for 10 years. In exchange, the school system agreed to give TCU exclusive naming rights to the new lab, to avoid sponsorship deals with other banks and to make TCU its exclusive provider of banking services.
School City of Mishawaka Assistant Superintendent Theodore Stevens said naming-rights deals have become a way for public school systems to generate money at a time when property tax cuts have led to income shortfalls.
"We're always looking for ways to generate revenue at a time when the structure with the state often provides less than we had in previous years," he said. "We have to access additional dollars if we're going to be competitive with other schools around us without going to the taxpayers constantly."
The $300,000 from TCU will largely go toward equipping the new innovation lab, which will offer middle-school students exposure to career skills in fields such as engineering and media, Stevens said. Also as part of the deal, TCU promised the district interest rates that are expected to generate an additional $1.2 million over 10 years, according to a news release.