Report on the Expenditure of Lottery Funds Fiscal Year 1996

Technology Programs

• Technology Programs as a Percentage of the FY96 Lottery Budget

• Department of Education Technology Programs

• Board of Regents Technology

• Department of Technical and Adult Education Technology

• Other Vocational Equipment

• Adult Literacy Equipment

Technology Programs as a Percentage of the FY96 Lottery Budget

The Georgia lottery has allowed schools, colleges, universities and other educational institutions to purchase millions of dollars worth of technological equipment. In the first two years of the lottery, the largest portion of lottery receipts went toward technological purchases. This trend reversed in the following year, FY96, when the smallest portion went toward technological purchases. As enrollments in the HOPE and Pre-K programs have grown, and lottery funds have stabilized, the funding for technology programs has been reduced.

Technology funds have gone to four agencies: the Professional Standards Commission, the Department of Technical and Adult Education (DTAE), the Board of Regents and the Department of Education (DOE). The figure below shows how much money was awarded to each agency by fiscal year (see Figure 8).

Figure 8. Technology Funding by Agency

For the first two years of lottery funding, the Department of Education received the largest portion of technology dollars. However, in FY96 the largest portion of technology dollars went to the Board of Regents. In FY96 all of these agencies saw a drop in lottery funding from their FY95 budgets. The Professional Standards Commission, which received lottery funds to strengthen technology training in colleges of education, was funded only in FY95.

With a one-time allocation of only $2 million has failed to bring colleges of education at the state’s universities and colleges into the technology age. Based on finding from their recent report on technology in schools, the Council recommended that new teachers need more and better instruction on using technology in the classroom.

[T]eacher preparation programs need to be retooled to include modeling of technology use by instructors. In addition, programs should provide instruction on integrating technology in to the curriculum and student teachers should be assigned to supervising teachers who are already users of technology. They should require at least one course on instructional technology and multimedia applications in the classroom (Council for School Performance 1996, 60).

Many teachers and administrators did not feel that colleges of education were adequately preparing teachers to use technology in the classroom.

Lottery dollars for technology have continued to be allocated to the Department of Education, the Board of Regents, and the Department of Technical and Adult Education. The following discusses those agencies’ technology programs.

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Department of Education Technology Programs

The Department of Education saw a large decrease in its level of funding for technology. In the first year of lottery funding, DOE received approximately $109 million for technological equipment. The following year, FY95, the amount was reduced to $93 million. In FY96, DOE received less than $10 million for technological equipment, making the total appropriation one-tenth of the FY94 amount. This large decrease corroborates recent findings from the Council’s report on instructional technology in schools. School administrators, teachers, and media specialists’ eagerness to use technology was offset only by the fear that funding would diminish (Council for School Performance, Two Miles Down a Ten Mile Road, 1996). Their fears seem to be a reflection of the decreasing budget.

The Department of Education received technology funding in FY96 for various programs. Table 21 shows how much money was appropriated to each program.

Table 21. Department of Education Technology Programs, FY96

Learning Logic (L²) is an interactive software program that students use to learn Pre-Algebra and Algebra I. The following schools received grants to purchase this program and to integrate it into instruction.

Table 22. Learning Logic Sites, FY96

Each of the 54 regional libraries in Georgia’s public library system received $40,000 to purchase computers and other equipment. The total appropriation for this purpose was $2,160,000.

The Next Generations Schools Project encourages educational innovation from local school systems. Selected school systems receive financial assistance from the state to implement new educational strategies. These one-year grants to school systems are used exclusively as "change" money. This project is only partially funded with lottery dollars. Additional dollars come from general funds. These grants must also be matched with either cash or in-kind contributions from private agencies and local school systems.

In the first two years of the lottery, this project received $1.5 million in lottery funding. In FY96, half a million lottery dollars went toward the project. Table 23 shows how the money was distributed among school systems.

Table 23. Next Generation Schools, FY96

Alternative schools provide instruction and social services for chronically disruptive students who do not function well in a traditional classroom setting. In FY95, $8.5 million in lottery funds allowed the purchase of instructional technology for these alternative schools. The next year an additional $5 million was used to purchase technological equipment for new and existing alternative schools. Table 24 shows how this money was distributed among school systems.

Table 24. Alternative Schools Equipment, FY96

As new technology enters schools, teachers, administrators and principals need training in the use of new technologies in teaching. Nine regional Technology Training Centers provide this training. In the first year of lottery funding, lottery funds ($1.2 million) were used to develop these centers, located at colleges, universities, and Regional Education Services Agencies (RESAs). The next year $900,000 in lottery funds was appropriated to the technology centers in FY95. The FY96 budget included $900,000 in lottery funds for equipment to improve the centers and additional money from general funds for operating costs. Table 25 details how lottery funds were distributed among the centers in FY96.

Table 25. Technology Training Centers, FY96

Each model technology school receives a grant with which it purchases technological equipment. These model projects help to identify cost-effective projects that have potential for broad-based replications. In addition, these projects find ways of effectively applying technology to the learning process.

Table 26. Model Technology Schools, FY96

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Board of Regents Technology

The Board of Regents has received lottery funding for many technology programs over the past three years. The majority of the funding has been to the Regents Trust Fund. The Board of Regents established the fund for purchasing equipment that is too expensive to be purchased from a single year’s budget. Table 27 shows Board of Regents’s projects funded through the lottery technology funds.

Table 27. Board of Regents Technology Programs, Fiscal Years 1994-1996

In FY96, the Regents Trust Fund, also referred to as the Equipment, Technology and Construction Trust Fund, provided funding for two projects: construction and equipment for the Institute of Computational Chemistry and Molecular Modeling at University of Georgia ($2,280,000) and equipment for Advanced Technology Labs at public two-year institutions ($3,000,000). Tables 28-31 show the expenditure of funds by institution by fiscal year from the Trust Fund.

Table 28. Board of Regents Trust Fund Expenditures for Universities by Fiscal Year

Table 29. Board of Regents Trust Fund Expenditures for Four-Year Colleges by Fiscal Year

Table 30. Board of Regents Trust Fund Expenditures for Two-Year Colleges by Fiscal Year

Table 31. Board of Regents Trust Fund Expenditures for Regents "B" Unit Institutions by Fiscal Year

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Department of Technical and Adult Education Technology

In the three years of lottery funding, the Department of Technical and Adult Education has received nearly $45.8 million in lottery funds for technology. The amount of money for this purpose has decreased each year, from a high of nearly $23 million in FY94 to less than $8 million in FY96. Most of those funds have been used to develop computer labs at technical institutes. However in FY96 no lottery money was appropriated for this purpose.

In FY96 the majority of lottery technology funds was spent on additional equipment for facilities currently under construction at technical institutes. Table 32 shows how this money was distributed by institution.

Table 32. Department of Technical and Adult Education Funding Programs