For years, a school custodian’s voice piped through the loudspeakers once the students left Rector A. Jones Middle School in Florence, Ky., with an invitation to teachers: The “retirement club” was meeting in a nearby classroom.
The club gathered to gossip and bond — and split a weekly purchase of lottery tickets. It continued for decades, and grew to around 30 current and former staffers over the years. They played the same numbers every week, some long after they’d retired or moved on from the school.
The camaraderie was enough to push aside pipe dreams of actually winning a prize, until one member asked Vice Principal Sharon Reynolds to check the results of a weekend drawing in late January. Reynolds, 55, read the numbers one by one.
“I started looking,” she said. “And we were matching, we were matching, we were matching.”
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After more than 20 years, Jones Middle School’s “retirement club” finally had a big winning ticket. The 30 current and former school employees split a $1 million Powerball prize, the Kentucky Lottery announced last week. Jones teachers told The Washington Post that the win elated a group of deserving colleagues, who pledged to use the money to pay bills, fund dream vacations, and donate to their students and community.
“Every one of us is going to give back in some way to the kids,” said Terri Webb, 59, a former special education teacher at Jones.
Few teachers remember how the lottery group at Jones started. But staff at the school have kept it going for over two decades, steadily bringing new teachers into the fold.
“I remember always doing it,” said Paola Sciaraffia, 55, a former Jones ESL teacher who has since moved to another school. “ … It became something cool that we all had in common and bonded us.”
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As with any workplace tradition, the club — now dubbed the “Jones 30” for its 30 participants — has closely followed rituals. Every week, the group pools its money to buy $20 worth of Powerball and Mega Millions tickets, with an agreement to split any winnings. For Powerball, they always play the same two sets of numbers, which were picked out of a hat several years ago by a former principal. The group’s organizer collects payment, buys the tickets and sends a photo of them to a group chat.
The tongue-in-cheek suggestion that any windfall would serve as the group’s retirement fund was just a joke, Reynolds said. They didn’t get into teaching — or the lottery group — for the money. But Reynolds said her colleagues deserved more pay and recognition for their work. Many teachers at Jones work second jobs, and it’s common for those in retirement to be pulled back into substitute teaching. Reynolds’s colleagues are so committed that they’ve bought shoes and clothes and covered field trip costs out of their own pockets for students in need, she said.
“This group of teachers is so, so selfless,” Reynolds said.
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When Reynolds reported that the group had won one of the Powerball’s top prizes, the usually sleepy group chat burst into a frenzy. The educators met at a restaurant last Monday to sign the winning ticket so that they could split the million-dollar prize. The next day, the teachers left school as soon as classes ended at 2:30 p.m. and raced south to Louisville to claim their prize at the Kentucky Lottery’s office.
Share this articleShareThere, the reality of the Jones 30’s improbable win hit them. When the Kentucky Lottery staff learned that they were about to write a check to a group of middle school teachers, they joined in the celebration.
“You’ve never seen so many tears fall, and how many people [were] yelling and taking selfies and pictures,” Webb said.
Each teacher received a check for $24,000 — not exactly a retirement fund, but enough to make a big difference for some. On the Jones 30 group chat, educators spoke about paying off bills, medical procedures and planning summer road trips. Reynolds set aside money for her three daughters, including one who has an upcoming wedding.
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As Webb predicted, some of the teachers sent portions of their winnings back to their community. Leonora Broome, a retired science teacher, donated 10 percent of her share to a Florence soup kitchen used by some Jones school families. Sciaraffia said she planned to use her winnings to act on a retirement goal of sending books and supplies to rural schools in her native Chile.
“I’m able to materialize everything that I’ve been dreaming of for many, many years,” Sciaraffia said.
As news trickled slowly through Jones Middle School of the retirement club’s luck, Reynolds said she overheard students gossiping in the cafeteria.
“I heard one of them say, ‘Man, did you hear? Thirty of our teachers won a million dollars, and if they all quit, we’re not going to have school,’” Reynolds laughed.
They needn’t worry. A lottery win did not blunt anyone’s passion for teaching, Reynolds said. The Jones 30 will be back in their classrooms. And they’ll continue playing the Powerball, numbers unchanged.
“Literally, about an hour ago, I got a text … with a picture of the new tickets,” Webb said.
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