What Are School Trust Lands?

Upon statehood, Congress granted school trust lands to states. Per the General Land Ordinance of 1785 and subsequent case law, school trust lands must be managed by states for the purpose of generating revenue in perpetuity for education. Currently, twenty states still retain significant acres of trust lands.

 

AL AK AZ AR CA CO CT DE FL GA HI ID IL IN IA KS KY LA ME MD MA MI MN MS MO MT NE NV NH NJ NM NY NC ND OH OK OR PA RI SC SD TN TX UT VT VA WA WV WI WY DC

States with school trust lands shown in green

How Do School Trust Lands Support Education?

Trust lands are intended to be used productively to maximize revenue for public schools. In most states, the revenue generated is deposited into the state permanent fund and the earnings then distributed to schools.

States have the responsibility as legal trustees to maximize revenue from the lands as well as ensure permanent funds are properly managed as an endowment for current and all future generations of schoolchildren.

The combined US State Permanent Funds
are currently worth: $72 Billion

Trust Lands & Permanent Funds Must Be Protected

Over the years, trust lands in many states have been sold off and mismanaged to the point that some states have lost all or major portions of their lands.

Unfortunately, mismanagement remains to this day. Problems include imprudent selling of lands at less than market value, federal land conservation designations that leave school trust lands stranded, poor financial management of permanent funds, diversion of revenues to uses other than education, and removing school trust lands from productive uses.

For example, roughly half of Washington’s school trust lands are off-limits to timber harvesting, and Colorado has converted 300,000 acres of school trust lands to “open space,” although Advocates for State Trust Lands stopped efforts to convert all three million acres.

Working to Guarantee the Trust

Luckily, Advocates for School Trust Lands is there to help reverse the mismanagement. We are educators, parents, school board members, state land commissioners, productive land users and others working to ensure the commitment to today’s schoolchildren and future generations is honored.

Achieving real results for schoolchildren: Advocates for School Trust Lands helped Utah increase revenue from school trust lands by 479% and grow the permanent fund from $18 million to over $2 billion. Advocates helped pass legislation in Minnesota to install a school trust lands director.

Advocates for School Trust Lands ensured over $600,000 of grazing funds were not diverted from the trust during a drought year in Oklahoma, and stopped efforts in Arizona and Montana to reduce revenue from school trust lands.

School Trust Lands 101