Cupertino's Schools Get 1.5% of Lottery Money

Maybe you didn’t buy one of those winning Mega Millions winning tickets like someone who stopped in at , but some of those dollars still make their way into the Cupertino community.

Since the Lottery began in October 1985 more than $24 billion were distributed to California schools.

Here’s a snapshot of how Cupertino benefitted in 2011, and year-to-date since 1985:

According to the California State Lottery Act funding is supplemental and when looking at the cost of education in the state could be really be called a drop in the bucket as the total contributions represent “approximately 1.5 percent of the state’s public school annual budget.

The per pupil funding level is the same across all education sectors, but because of the larger number of students K-12 schools gobble up almost 77 percent. Community colleges are well behind at 16 percent; California State University system at just over 4 percent; University of California comes in shy of 3 percent; and “other educational entities” receives less than 1 percent.