A group of 30 current and former employees of a Kentucky middle school won a $1 million jackpot by hiding the winning ticket in their math textbooks.
The educators call themselves the “Jones 30,” after the President A. Jones Middle School in Florence where they all met.
According to a press release, the group’s organizer, a former math teacher, said the day after the Jan. 27 Powerball drawing, the group matched five white balls, but did not match the Powerball numbers, and the game ended. He said he realized he had won the second prize of $1 million.
After discovering that the ticket he bought at the Kroger grocery store in Hebron was a winner, it was firmly “stuck away in my math textbook.”
“Nobody looks at math books,” she joked.
“I knew I was safe there…200 pages. I’ve checked this a thousand times.”
The group carpooled after work Tuesday to collect their prize money and entered the lobby to cheers.
Each received a check for $24,000 after taxes.
They’ve been playing the lottery for money for over eight years, but they’ve stuck to a “set of permanent Powerball numbers” that they independently chose in 2019 to play every week.
“My math teacher and vice principal pulled it out of a hat,” one winner explained.
“At first, I couldn’t choose the right number of numbers, so I drew again. Thankfully, it all worked out.”
Kentucky Lottery President and CEO Mary Harville met with the group and posed for a photo with them as they collected their winnings.
“Kentucky Lottery games bring fun to players,” Harville said.
“And these award-winning educators were having the time of their lives. It was great to see a new chapter unfold in their friendship thanks to the Kentucky Lottery.” .”
Some group members say they plan to invest their winnings, while others plan to travel or repair their homes.
“Many of us went on trips together. We had babies and grandchildren over the years,” said one of the honorees.
“We always have so much fun. It’s really great to win as a group and share this experience.”
The group plans to continue playing the lottery together as a way to stay in touch.
According to the Kentucky Lottery’s website, fiscal year 2023 was “the 12th consecutive year that Kentucky Lottery sales records were broken,” with total sales exceeding $1.8 billion.
Since the lottery’s creation in 1989, $6.8 billion worth of revenue has been raised and donated to various programs across the state, the lottery reported.
The site continued that since 1999, more than $4.8 billion has been distributed toward education grant and scholarship programs.
