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A breakdown of lottery funds accessible to Swain
Hannah Styles
hstyles@thesmokymountaintimes.com
You have probably heard of the North Carolina Education Lottery and that funds from it go to benefit North Carolina schools, but how much is actually given to schools and what can it be used for? Do the funds go directly to the school, filter through the county first, or are they distributed at the state level?
After speaking with Swain County School’s Finance Director Stephanie Treadway, the answer isn’t that simple. School funding is a complex system, and there are different categories of funding and grants available from the lottery that vary from year to year.
“We do receive NC Education Lottery Funds. These funds are held at the state level until they are requested by the county. The county prepares a drawdown request of the funds, and then our board chair reviews and signs off on it. These funds are typically used to help pay off the loans that the county has incurred for major school construction and/or improvements,” Treadway said. “The new high school addition was funded by a grant from lottery funds, therefore, our annual distribution was halted for five years.”
Superintendent Mark Sale provided further detail on the breakdown of the funding.
“According to information from Van Denton, Director of Communications with NC Lottery, funding is split into several categories: non-instructional support, transportation, NCPreK,Scholarships, UNC Needs Based scholarship, and Public School Capital Fund (PSCF). To my knowledge, the only funding we have direct access to is PSCF,” Sale said.
Sale said, in the 2017-18 budget year, the PSCF total was about 14% of the total lottery allotment for Swain County, which varies but is usually around $800,000 to $1 million. The PSCF amount for 2018-2019 was $33,091.
“Some of our students at Bright Adventures are funded through the lottery NCPreK allotment. In that same budget year, these equated to about 22.5% of the total amount. The other portions are controlled from Raleigh. PSCF has traditionally been applied to debt service for the schools by the local government.”
In 2018-19, Swain County Schools, in collaboration with the local county government, applied for a capital needs based grant for an addition at the high school. That funding was a separate element of the lottery program.
“Swain County received a little over $4.7 million for this project. The remaining cost was covered by the Swain County government. By receiving this grant, all PSCF was canceled for five years,” Sale explained.
To help recover from the missing annual funds due to the grant, revenue from Article 46 tax receipts were allocated toward debt service. Article 46 is available because of the 1/4 cent sales referendum passed four years ago in the county and was passed on the premise it would be dedicated to capital and debt service for schools.
With the recent passage of the 2021-2023 state budget, PSCF withholding is limited to three years for previous recipients instead of five years, meaning Swain County may be eligible to apply for PSCF again this year but the matching component has been restructured based on tax availability. Currently, the county would not be required to provide any matching funds, according to Sale.
A needs list far greater than the funding available
“Our school system is in dire need of several large-scale capital projects,” Sale said.
The Pre-K and middle school are at the top of the list.
Bright Adventures Pre-K needs to be replaced as the buildings are mobile units over 20 years old, but lottery funding cannot be used to replace those because it is only available for K-12 facilities, according to Sale.
Swain Middle School also needs to be replaced as the building was built in the 1950s and the HVAC system is 30 years old. The gym facilities are in bad shape, the campus is undersized, the cafeteria needs to be replaced, and the traffic flow is a continual problem, according to Superintendent
Sale.
The Swain County Board of Education must decide to renovate or eventually build a new middle school, which will take years and a large amount of funds.
Other needs include sports facilities and a bus garage.
“The high school track must be replaced. It is undersized both in length and number of lanes, needs to be resurfaced, and is failing from the substructure. Our track and field program has been one of our most successful athletic endeavors in the past 10 years,” Sale explained.
The bus garage, located along the Tuckasegee River on Hwy 19 is approaching 100 years old.
According to Swain County Schools’ most recent Department of Public Instruction 2020-21survey, the total cost of all facilities needs topped $23 million.
This included: a new Pre-K, lunch room for the middle school, bus garage, replacement of all HVAC at the middle school and high school, a new track facility with an internal practice field, site prep and additional parking.
The school board and commissioners are currently working with NOVUS Architects from Asheville to develop a long-term facilities plan and will hold their fourth meeting in the next two weeks to discuss updates.
Although lottery funds are given to Swain schools, they hardly make a dent in the overall needs in the district, and the district relies heavily on outside grants and funding to help with renovations and projects.