News Summary

Local school officials aren't buying the odds that additional lottery proceeds allocated to education would help their funding situations.

An advisory panel for Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland recommended last month the lottery scale back the 59 percent it returned in prizes to contribute more money to education.

Ohio Lottery officials say cutting the prizes to boost profits instead would decrease sales and its education contribution.

Lottery sales are up almost

16 percent over the last five years, but the amount earmarked to schools increased less than two percent. Currently, only 6 percent of the money the state lottery earns goes to schools, said Ohio Department of Education spokesman J.C. Benton.

Even if more money were designated to schools, it wouldn't help local districts' bottom lines, according to officials.

State funding for Ohio schools is calculated using a per-student-formula. School districts receive about $5,500 per student from the state.

More money from the lottery proceeds wouldn't increase the funding per student for local districts, "unless you're changing the school funding formula in a radical way," said Hamilton City Schools Treasurer Bob Hancock.

The state also would have to agree to increase the per student amount funded to local schools for the change to trickle down to local entities.

"My hope would be that if, in fact, they were going to designate

more money for the schools, that it would actually be additional money," said Carlisle Superintendent Tim McLinden. "In the past, money from the lottery, the excess lottery proceeds, did not go to the schools. It was the right hand giveth and the left hand taketh away.

"Essentially that didn't accomplish anything except encourage people to buy lottery tickets."

The state education department could not predict whether additional lottery funds would affect education at the local level because the department has not done any simulations on the issue, said spokeswoman Karla Carruthers.