The N.C. General Assembly should have considered the consequences of abruptly changing the formula for appropriating funds from the North Carolina Education Lottery without giving recipients time to anticipate the changes.
Although the General Assembly has been shifting the formula every year since the lottery’s inception in 2005, this year’s is the largest change.
School systems, therefore, should have been given ample notice so that they could prepare for the cuts. The formula for the lottery has been something that K-12 schools have come to depend on as being fairly consistent.
While the additional money given to UNC-system financial aid will be put to good use, especially in the face of budget cuts and reduced funding from the state, it is unfortunate that it comes at the expense of K-12 schools throughout the state.
Public elementary, middle and high schools were expecting a similar amount of money from the education lottery this year — money that would have been used for school construction and repairs.
School systems were counting on the appropriated money from the education lottery to help pay back banks after receiving or taking out bonds, which were used to finance school construction.
Now school systems must turn to other measures to find funds to make the necessary infrastructure repairs to their schools, such as asking counties to raise taxes or cutting services somewhere else, neither of which may be successful and could cause more harm to already budget-strapped school systems.
The UNC system has a lot of places that it can pull additional resources from, particularly for financial aid, unlike K-12 school systems that primarily rely on state funding and revenue from taxes.
