SANTA PAULA : School Gets $31,517 in Lottery Grants

Santa Paula Union High School students will be able to play Monopoly in Spanish this year, while cafeteria workers will find their jobs made easier by a dishwasher-rinse sprayer.

These and other supplies will be purchased as the result of onetime mini-grants of up to $350 given to each of the district’s 120 full-time teachers and support personnel from California Lottery funds, school Supt. Carolina Erie said.

Most of the $31,517 in requests were processed during the summer, but several staff members held off until this week’s school board meeting to obtain approval for supplies for particular projects. Among this final group, the board approved paint and paper for an art class, maps for social studies, computer software for math, and career-assessment inventories for the guidance department.

Science teachers joined forces to buy two software programs and a laser disc. The school’s parent organization donated $1,600 toward the $2,370 price.

The money for these supplies will come from money already earmarked for instructional materials, in keeping with the original intent of the lottery, Erie said.

Based on last year’s figures, the district had assumed that it would receive $212,000 in lottery funds for this school year, said Tahir Asad, district fiscal officer.

Recent reductions in lottery ticket sales, however, have caused the county to predict that the $170 per student the district had expected may be cut by as much as $15 per student statewide. If such cuts are made, the district will continue to fund the computer lab and to reduce class size but may have to dip into its general fund to do so, Asad said.