City Brights: Rachel Norton : Lottery support for education is a 'sucker bet'

City Brights: Rachel Norton : Lottery support for education is a 'sucker bet'

Lottery support for education is a 'sucker bet'

California Lottery

A few months ago, the San Francisco Board of Education asked our Parent Advisory Council (PAC) and Parents for Public Schools San Francisco (PPS-SF) to conduct community conversations on the district's budget situation -- a $113 million deficit projected through the 2011-12 school year. The idea was to inform our community about the awful choices we are facing, listen to community priorities, and gather input and ideas.

The two-month effort did all of those things admirably, but I was chagrined to read in the PAC/PPS report that more than a few people are still wondering why education funding in California is in trouble -- don't we have all that lottery money? Now, anyone involved in K-12 education in California knows that the lottery has never been a significant source of income for California's schools, no matter what voters were told in 1984 when the lottery was created. But how to explain why?

Thank goodness for the California Budget Project (CBP). I subscribe to their daily "California Budget Bites" e-newsletter (highly recommended, by the

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