With money so tight in the education system these days, you’d think cash-strapped school districts would jump at the chance to accept donations from business.

But that’s not the case in Vancouver, where the school district turned down nearly half-a-million dollars from Chevron, citing the danger of polluting the minds of students with dirty money from Big Oil.

The uproar over Chevron’s Fuel Your School program has exploded into a divisive issue on the municipal-election campaign trail.

Mayor Gregor Robertson, seeking his third term on Nov. 15, supports his Vision Vancouver school-board colleagues for rejecting the Chevron loot.

But rival mayoralty candidate Kirk LaPointe and his NPA team slammed Vision’s “rigid ideological views” for turning down free money for Vancouver kids.

“It’s a classic case of ideology trumping reality,” said LaPointe. “The reality is schools are struggling for financing and if there’s an opportunity to benefit — without any corporate messaging or branding in the classroom — we should consider it.”

“Kirk LaPointe should be fighting for more public funding for public schools, not taking money from corporations,” fired back Vancouver school board chair Patti Bacchus, seeking re-election under the Vision banner.

“There’s a reason corporations so desperately covet the captive audience of children and youth in schools. If you can brand these kids they will know corporate logos before they know the alphabet.”

The Chevron program has been a big hit in other districts, where teachers have snapped up the money for school projects and supplies.

“There was huge interest in this program in Surrey and the funds offered up by Chevron were drained in a matter of days,” said Surrey school-board chair Shawn Wilson, also seeking re-election.

Wilson said Surrey teachers received about $200,000 from the program to pay for a variety of classroom supplies. Fuel Your School has also been popular in Burnaby, Coquitlam, West Vancouver, North Vancouver and White Rock.

Bacchus said Vancouver rejected the money because the program requires teachers to submit projects for funding that must be pre-approved by MyClassNeeds, a Canadian charity that partners with Chevron.

She said that amounts to corporate control of the school curriculum, banned under district policies.

“What happens in the classroom must be absolutely free of direct or indirect corporate influence,” she said.

Wilson scoffs at that, saying Surrey has the same policy against corporate influence in schools, but the district closely examined the Fuel Your School program and decided it was fine.

“It’s not like they’re advertising in schools or pushing their products at kids,” he said. “The school supplies don’t have Chevron logos or decals on them.”

Critics point to an online Chevron video that shows the program in action at Bear Creek Elementary School in Surrey, where excited kids received five boxes of building blocks.

The video includes a brief glimpse of a Fuel Your School poster, complete with Chevron logo, displayed on a whiteboard in the school classroom.

Fuel Your School classroom delivery from MyClassNeeds.ca on Vimeo.

Wilson said the district allowed Chevron to do a one-time video recording to promote the program and the Chevron logo popped up in the classroom by mistake.