11th October, 2011. TWIN FALLS, ID One, Two, Three: Scratch ! The College of Southern Idaho’s gym was swarmed with teachers and staff all hoping win big ! The 11th annual “Scratch for Schools” contest was joined by more than 70 Magic Valley schools.
This contest consists in having teams of 3 representing each participating school. The Idaho Lottery Commission gives each school 5 minutes to scratch as many dollar lottery tickets as the team can scratch. The 13 top schools that scratched the most tickets get the chance to advance to the next round. And so on, until the winning school is left. State lottery
David Workman, spokesman for the Idaho Lottery, described the process in detail “We give every single school an entire pack of tickets, that’s 300 tickets; they get 5 minutes to scratch as fast as they possibly can. Top scratching schools advance to another round, a finals round, where they get another pack of tickets and another 5 minutes to scratch. At the end of the day the schools get to keep all of the money that they get from all of their tickets.”
It must be specified that in this event only adults can participate and the contest, no students are permitted. The game has one interesting rule, although the target is to have the 3 members of each team scratch as many possible tickets, only two of them can be scratching at the same time. Also the only tools permitted in this game are the scratchers provided by the lottery, other tools like putty knives, credit cards, coins, paint scrapers, steel wool an razor blades are definitely not acceptable. Lotteries
Besides the amount that these tickets reveal there are also additional prizes based on the total number of tickets scratched, thus doubling the chance to raise even more funds for schools. Mega lottery
In this event, over 25,000 thousand tickets were scratched this afternoon. And on average, each school walked away with almost $1,000 each.
Since Scratch for Schools began in 2001, Idaho Lottery has given $470,198 additional dollars to Idaho Public Schools and the Permanent Building Fund. The Jim Bruce Scratch for Schools is a fund-raising event that provides schools a chance to raise more funds for the school´s various needs.
