$120,000 Expected in February : Little Lake Schools to Divide Lottery Pot

Trustees of the Little Lake City School District Tuesday agreed to take action next week on proposed lottery fund expenditures, which would include an allocation of $45,000 to be divided among the nine district schools in Santa Fe Springs and Norwalk.

The district expects to receive about $120,000 in February for the first quarter of the lottery-money distribution, Supt. John Pulice said. He said school officials recommended that the money be spent on projects that would directly benefit students and schools.

“There were certain special needs that needed to be addressed” in coming up with the list of proposed projects, he said.

The list could be modified or approved as is. Board member Richard Moore suggested that trustees list priorities and submit them to the district. Besides the allocation to each school, proposed projects include $30,000 for science textbooks, $9,000 for library books, $7,000 for the instructional-materials center and $5,000 for after-school sports.

Genie Blackburn, a teacher at Studebaker Elementary School, said the school staff protested the $5,000 allocation per school.

“While we appreciate the proposal’s obvious effort to spread the lottery money around, we feel it spreads the money too thin--so thin, in fact, that its effect would be almost invisible,” she said, reading from a typed statement. She added that Studebaker staff members “feel strongly that our district should not nickel and dime the lottery monies away.” Instead, the school staff suggested that the district allocate $13,000 to each school.

But board members and Pulice stressed that the list was a good start, considering this was the first disbursement of the lottery funds.