happy Easter

In the news: 

GEORGETOWN, Texas | Huffington Post By Jim Vertuno (Sunday, April 8 2012) – Thousands of worshipers turned out for an outdoor Easter morning service featuring an appearance by New York Jets backup quarterback Tim Tebow at a central Texas church. Tebow was scheduled to speak Sunday at Celebration Church's "Easter on the Hill" service on a rolling grassy field about 20 miles north of Austin. The event had the feeling of a rock concert with hundreds of school buses shuttling crowds to the sprawling megachurch from nearby shopping malls. The church invited people to bring lawn chairs and blankets for the two-hour service under sunny skies. Read the complete story. 

Mega Millions: Do Lotteries Really Benefit Public Schools? Washington Post By Valerie Strauss – State lotteries that participate in games such as Mega Millions were sold to the public as enterprises that would benefit schools with millions of dollars in proceeds a year. So has public education really received a windfall?

If you look at the payouts from lotteries to schools, you might be impressed by the numbers. In California, for example, all lottery donations to public schools from kindergarten through college, total $24,018,713,472 since 1985. Yes, that’s $24 billion. K-12 schools alone have received a total of $19.3 billion. It makes you wonder how some California public schools have had to hold bake sales to keep the lights on, doesn’t it?

In fact, in state after state, where lotteries send millions of dollars to public education, schools are still starved. Why? Because instead of using the money as additional funding, legislatures have used the lottery money to pay for the education budget and spent the money that would have been used had there been no lottery cash on other things. Public school budgets, as a result, haven’t gotten a boost because of the lottery funding.

In Texas, where the lottery was sold to the public, as in other places, as a fun game that would reap big rewards for public education, according to the American-Statesman, in 1996, “lottery proceeds paid for about two weeks of schooling for Texas students.” By 2010, the money covered barely three days.

Forty two states plus the District of Columbia and the U. S. Virgin Islands participate in the Mega Millions game. So, yes, a lot of money goes to public schools from the lotteries. But no, the money doesn’t do what it was promised it would by any means.