Lottery Revenues are Up, So Why Has SC Education Been Cut?

The South Carolina Education Lottery announced Thursday that it has now provided more than $2.2 billion to education in the state since the lottery started in 2002. Lottery revenues are also up by almost $8 million this year despite the down economy.

So a lot of people are wondering, why have there been so many education cuts? Isn’t the lottery supposed to help our schools?

The answer is that the state law that created the lottery limits how lottery revenue can be used. When some other states created their lotteries, lottery revenue ended up simply replacing tax dollars so the schools were no better off. So South Carolina lawmakers wrote the law prohibiting lottery revenue from replacing existing school spending. That means lottery money could not be used to pay a teacher’s salary, for example.

SC Education Lottery Beneficiary Communications Coordinator Julie Huffman says, “Lottery proceeds, they are not meant to take the place of tax funds that go towards funding programs for school districts and such. It only adds to it. We’re a supplementary thing.“

You can see a breakdown of where lottery revenues go here.

There’s another reason you may not see as much of an impact in your local school as you might expect: most lottery revenue goes to higher education. 73.36 percent of lottery revenue goes to higher ed, with most of it going to fund scholarships.

USC senior Mindy Chapman gets a LIFE scholarship. “And that helps a lot because a lot of that money goes towards my tuition and then whatever money I get left, I can use for my books. So that helps out a lot,“ she says.

K-12 education has received 24.16 percent of the lottery revenue so far, with most of that going to K-5 programs. The money goes to enhancement programs in reading, writing, science and social studies. It also pays for computers, textbooks, workbooks and other supplies.

Lottery money has also bought more than 400 new school buses, along with fuel and maintenance.