Lottery funds small, increasingly critical part of budget

Lottery funds for education have not helped schools in Tehama County avoid financial stress.

Proposition 37, passed in 1984, established the state Lottery Act, requiring at least 34 percent of lottery revenues to go to public education.

Since the 1999-2000 fiscal year, 50 percent of any increase in lottery revenues also must go to school districts and community colleges.

But, with many primary and secondary schools, community colleges and universities facing drastic budget cuts, lottery revenues barely make a dent.

Randy Jones, business manager at the Glenn County Office of Education, said lottery revenues are so small that in the county office, the money "normally is used to enhance programs in one-time types of expenditures."

Exactly how the funds are spent "vary from district to district," he added.

In the Willows Unified School District about 1.7 percent of revenues come from lottery funds, according to Business Manager Betty Skala.

She said the majority is used to support sports, but a small amount also helps cover operations.

Even though the amount is not big, "I'm grateful for it. It would be tough without it," Skala said. "Just keep playing. We need the money."

Lottery funds only contribute about 1 percent of the state's overall education revenues, according to Stel Cordano at the Department of Education.

In the 2008-09 budget year, $1.04 billion in lottery money was added to the California education fund, she said.

That year, $126 per student average daily attendance was distributed to school districts and county offices of education, Cordano said.

California Lottery spokesman Alex Traverso predicts the amount will be closer to $1.5 billion for 2009-10, because "it's the first year in the past four that lottery sales have gone up."

In the first three quarters of '09-10, the last period for which data are available, $835 million in lottery revenues went to public education.

Final figures for the fiscal year will be available in September, Traverso said.

Since the lottery began, the cumulative distribution has amounted to 80.54 percent of the total; community colleges got 13.31 percent; California State University system, 3.74 percent; and University of California, 2.2 percent; the rest has gone to other educational entities such as adult education and charter schools, according to the California Lottery website.

In 2008-09, Glenn County schools received $784,500 in lottery money.

By state law, lottery funds are split into nonrestricted and restricted categories.

In 2000, voters passed Proposition 20, requiring that when lottery revenues allotted for education reach $817 million, a portion of the money must be spent on state adopted instructional materials — textbooks, library books, laboratory equipment and software, for example.

In 2008-09, that broke down to $16 in Prop 20 funds per ADA and $110 in nonrestricted funds per ADA, Cordano said.

Unrestricted funds still have some restrictions, however. The money cannot be spent on facilities or maintenance, for example.