GREENSBORO, N.C. — I's the number one question we get and we get it at least once a week.
"Where is all the education lottery money going?"
We've answered the question before, but it's worth going over and over again.
When you buy a $1 lottery ticket, about $.30 of that goes to education. The rest basically goes towards paying out prizes and management of the lottery. Check out this graphic showing the amount of money going towards education since it began in 2006. The bar all the way on the right-- is the 2017-2018 school year, it shows $670 million. That's $670 million divided between all 100 counties.
To put that in context:
The entire lottery payout to education was $670 million.
The payout to Guilford County Schools was $33 million.
The total budget Guilford County Schools was $706 million. Which means that lottery money makes up just 4.6% of the school system budget.
NOW, the lottery has an interactive map. You can highlight whatever county you're interested in and you can see how much the county received.and what they used it for.
For instance, with Guilford County getting a little more than $33 million last year, the bulk of it, $17 million went to support staff, office assistants, custodians and substitute teachers.