The California Lottery is making a contribution of $2.2 billion to the state’s K-12 schools, the CSU and UC systems and community colleges this year, the result of sales in the 2024-25 fiscal year.

“From the very beginning, our mission has been to raise supplemental funding explicitly to support schools,” said California Lottery Director Harjinder K. Shergill-Chima in a press release from October. “Our dedicated workforce takes a tremendous amount of pride in the work we do every day — all in the name of public education.

“We are a mission-focused and cause-driven organization, and we want to thank our players and retail partners alike for supporting education right along with us; we couldn’t be successful without them,” said Shergill-Chima.

Voters passed the California State Lottery Act of 1984, allowing the Lottery to supplement funding for public education through the sale of lottery tickets. Since then, the organization has raised over $46 billion for public schools across the state.

The State Controller’s office looks at average daily attendance to determine how much funding is dispersed between districts. K-12 schools receive the bulk of the lottery funds (79.9%), followed by community colleges (14%), CSU (3.7%), UC (2.3%) and other educational entities (0.1%).

In 2023-24, the CSU received $43.6 million from the program. The 23-campus system is required to report to the governor and state legislature how much funding it receives and what it’s used for.

Funds are used to “support campus-based and systemwide programs for the benefit of CSU students,” according to a memo sent to the legislature.

In 2023-24, Cal State Monterey Bay received $722,000 from the program.

Funds were used to support library subscriptions, IT equipment, student and faculty travel for research competitions, Student Disability and Accessibility services and more, according to university spokesman Walter Ryce. In the 2024-25 funding cycle, CSUMB is getting an additional $15,000 boost from the 2023-24 funds.

In Monterey County, school districts received almost $7 million in 2023-24 to support their schools. Since the program began, the additional funding provided totals nearly $527 million.

Monterey Peninsula Unified School District received nearly $740,000 last year in supplemental funding to purchase instructional materials, technology and provide discretionary funds for school sites, according to Superintendent PK Diffenbaugh.

Funding also goes toward the Home and Hospital program, which takes credentialed instructors into a student’s home to teach when a student is temporarily unable to attend school due to a physical or emotional condition.

The funding is a needed and welcome financial boost for school districts, but as Diffenbaugh explained, there is always more to be done when it comes to financing local schools.

“While we’ll never turn down any funding and we’re very grateful for any additional funds,” he said, “the lottery funds make up a little less than 1% of our revenue, so it’s not as big an impact as some people in the community think.”

A big plus side to the lottery funding is that there is flexibility in how a district can spend their share.

“In a time when resources are very scarce and federal funding is going away from COVID relief funds, it comes in really handy,” said Diffenbaugh.

In the 2024-25 funding cycle, Pacific Grove Unified School District will receive around $300,000 to be distributed for various instructional materials helpful for student achievement, according to Superintendent Linda Adamson.

In addition to miscellaneous materials such as textbooks or workbooks, the funding will help the district get ready to adopt a new English Language Arts curriculum for transitional kindergarten through 12th grade.

The lottery funding will offset additional enrichment materials the district may typically not be able to afford. “It’s sort of like the Cadillac version of the program versus just the basic necessities,” said Adamson.

Since 1985, the two districts have received over $88 million in extra funding.

“It gives us the ability to use (funds) for anything further that we know our students are going to need,” said Adamson. “It’s nice to have it as an additional boost to what we’re doing… it’s nice to be able to know that we can rely on that when we’re in need of additional materials or support for our students.”