Enter the Real Seal Appeal Sweepstakes: Win Money for Your Local School

If your kids attend school in--or if you teach in--California, chances are there's been plenty of anxiety on campus over education budget cuts. Last year my two son's school raised over $50,000 so we could keep much-needed staff positions--really, how could we be an effective technology school when the tech coordinator job is chopped? Budgets aren't getting any better, so all the education-minded Californians out there will want to know about the Real Seal Appeal Sweepstakes, an effort by Real California Milk to support elementary schools in the Golden State.

The way the sweepstakes works is pretty simple: Just like with Box Tops for Education, when you go to the store, you buy dairy products--milk, butter, cheese, yogurt, even nonfat dry milk--that have the Real California Milk seal on the packaging. They look like this:

Then you snip the seals from the packaging and hand them in to your school's teachers. Each seal is a sweepstakes entry, so the more seals collected and turned in increases the chances of your child's classroom and school winning up to $2 million in cash, books (they're partnering with Scholastic) and prizes. The sweepstakes doesn't end until December 31, 2011, so there's plenty of time--especially with the holidays coming up and people doing more cooking than usual--to send in lots of entries.

Indeed, the big prize money--$20,000, $10,000 and $5,000--will go to three schools each, but 2,595 other schools will also win $500--money that can help restock a school library or buy much needed supplies. And, of course, when you buy those products, you're also supporting the state's 1,620 dairy farmers--not those rogue dairy farmers in Wisconsin. 

The contest is only running in certain counties--Imperial, Kern, Los Angeles,Orange, Riverside, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, San Bernardino, San Diego and Ventura--and not every school district seems to be participating--I didn't see Compton Unified on the list, which is disturbing to this former Compton teacher--but to find out all the details and whether your specific district is on board, just go to RealCaliforniaMilk.com, or you can follow updates on the sweepstakes on Facebook/RealCaliforniaMilk, on Twitter with the hashtag #CASealAppeal, or check out all the mooing going on at @RealCalifMilk

If your kid's school is anything like my kid's school, they need the money, so good luck to you.


(this is a sponsored post)