Tangible results are visible to show the societal impact the North Carolina Education Lottery is having on this state.
Bladen County needed to come up with only $7 million to get a new school for a rural community due to the funds available from the state lottery program.
New Tar Heel School receives $40 mil. grant from NC Education Lottery
The new Tar Heel School in Bladen County was built in part due to a $40 million grant from the North Carolina lottery. That translates to 85% of the cost of construction. The glimmering new school is replacing a nearly 100 year-old building, and the residents couldn’t be happier.
“It’s going to revolutionize our learning,” says teacher Heather Bobbey, who was chosen Tar Heel Middle School Teacher of the Year in 2021-22.
While playing the lottery may be a reflexive pastime for many North Carolinians, the dollars spent add up, and that’s how local officials were able to plan and develop a school that could alter the course of the lives of many young people in tiny Tar Heel, located south of Fayetteville, and situated between that city and Wilmington.
Safety, valuable tech upgrades, and environmental efficiency
The Tar Heel School, a K-12 facility, has features that will make it efficient and dynamic: solar panels on the roof will help curb energy costs; safety equipment make the school safer for children; and computer and distance learning technology will improve curriculum. All in all, it will completely overhaul the student experience at Tar Heel School.
“This is like the Cadillac version of a school,” said Tar Heel School District Superintendent Dr. Jason Atkinson.
The local community in and around Tar Heel, which has a population of 117 as of the 2020 U.S. Census, had to raise just $7 million at the county level. The NC Lottery paid the rest.
That’s how the lottery should work, and why state lawmakers tied it to education when signing it into law in 2005.
“Without that support it would be really hard for rural districts like Bladen County to do their [school] construction,” Dr. Atkinson said.
More than half of NC counties have received $1.4 bil. in lottery funding
Thus far, 55 out of 100 NC counties have received a total of $1.4 billion from the state lottery for the purpose of building schools or renovating them, according to the NC Education Lottery website.
The NC Education Lottery does an exceptional job: 96 cents out of every dollar spent on the lottery in North Carolina returns to the state as funding for education, prizes, and commissions paid to retailers. 100% of the lottery’s profits are fund education programs and school projects in-state.
Only 13 months after its launch in 2005, the NC Education Lottery topped $1 billion in sales. According to the state, more than $10 billion in tax revenue has been generated from the NC Lottery in its nearly 20 years.
Image Credit: North Carolina Education Lottery
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