This week’s “Daily Journal” guest columnist is Terry Stoops, Education Policy Analyst for the John Locke Foundation.
I have been fortunate enough to be one of the first to report a developing story out of the city of Lumberton. Several school leaders in Robeson County are fuming about the apparent failings of the education lottery and have gone to the General Assembly to do something about it.
They contend that the lottery will not provide sufficient funds for their educational programs and capital needs. Lumberton school leaders have sent a formal request to the General Assembly, asking the legislators to launch an investigation. Their written complaint offers evidence that they will not receive the funds that the education lottery promised. The word out of Raleigh is that the General Assembly agreed to investigate, and leaders in both parties will appoint prominent legislators to an education lottery commission.
Of course, I am talking about the Lumberton Academy lottery of 1802. In that year, the General Assembly authorized a private lottery to raise funds for the school, a common practice in the early 19th century. According to UNC-Wilmington historian Alan Watson, members of the General Assembly believed that education lotteries were a testament to how seriously they took their responsibility to support education in the decades before state-supported public schools.
After years of meager lottery revenues, Lumberton Academy trustees requested that the General Assembly look into the matter. The trustees were convinced that individuals affiliated with the academy were pocketing ticket money. In 1807, the General Assembly launched a formal commission to investigate, but unfortunately, there is no record that the commission prosecuted any wrongdoers. We do know that frequent improprieties with lottery revenue prompted members of the General Assembly to admit that the lottery did not provide schools the money they needed.
A mere 203 years after the start of the Lumberton Academy lottery, the North Carolina General Assembly established our new state-operated education lottery. Gov. Easley and his supporters in the legislature claim that the state education lottery reflects how seriously they take their responsibility to support public schools. Critics point out that the lottery will not provide schools the money they will need. Some things never change.
Provided the lottery survives the recent legal challenge, the upcoming “Short Session” will give the General Assembly an opportunity to redeem the education lottery by reconsidering how the money will be spent. As currently written, the lottery law will do little to fund the most critical needs of North Carolina’s students because half of the money will supplant existing funds for unproven class size reduction and pre-kindergarten programs. The General Assembly can maximize the educational benefit of the lottery revenue by redirecting lottery funds to charter schools and to school districts that have critical school construction needs. This would provide some relief for those who live in counties that want to raise taxes to pay for multimillion dollar school construction bonds. (If you live in Wake or Mecklenburg counties, that last phrase should read “multibillion dollar school construction bonds.”)
Dislike for the lottery should not breed indifference to it. Opponents of the lottery should try to make the best of a bad situation by making sure that the lottery revenue yields a maximum return on its investment in public education. This means that the effort to redesign how the General Assembly distributes lottery revenue must enlist the support of those who did not agree with the lottery law in the first place.
Likewise, supporters of the lottery should not be content to allow the law to remain in its current form. The refrain from school districts across the state is that the lottery does not sufficiently meet their needs. If the lottery is to have the kind of positive effect on public education that supporters claim, then there is no choice but to change the distribution scheme currently in place.
Until legislators revise the lottery revenue distribution plan, the chances that our new education lottery will be a success are no better than they were for the Lumberton Academy lottery of 1802.