At ASTL, we work to advocate and support the fiduciary commitments to the school children of the States we work in. We are a dedicated group of volunteers working to assure the endowment granted to each state, maximizes its revenue generation to the beneficiaries it was intended to support, our children, and their education. Our work is inspired by the vision the founding fathers of this country had in the development of the Federally Granted School Trust Lands states received at statehood. Today, we work hard to assure this legacy and critical funding continues. We would love for you to join us in this effort.  – Matt Comisky – President of ASTL

OUR MISSION

School trust lands were granted to states at the time of statehood for the sole purpose of generating revenue in perpetuity for public education.

Advocates for School Trust Lands helps states honor their historic commitment to optimize revenues from school trust lands and manage their permanent funds as an ever-growing, sustainable source of education funding.

ADVOCATES: WORKING TO GUARANTEE THE TRUST

We are parents, educators, school board members, state land commissioners, productive land users, and others working to ensure a robust endowment for the benefit of today’s schoolchildren and all future generations, as intended since the founding of our country.

We work with education groups and policy making groups on school trust land issues to achieve real results for schoolchildren.

Learn More About Trust Lands

Our History

In 1999 public schools across the West needed an advocate to make sure states were acting with undivided loyalty, as directed by their Acts of Admission and constitutions, to beneficiaries on 45 million acres of school trust land. 

Margaret Bird, an economist with the Utah State Office of Education, and Karen Rupp, then Vice President of the Utah PTA, decided to do something about that. Both had full-time jobs and families, but they took on a job that no one else was ready to do. They created the Children’s Land Alliance Supporting Schools, or “CLASS.”

Organizing education leaders in 20 mostly Western states looked like a huge job so they invited Utah PTA Legislative Vice-President Paula Plant to join them. They went to South Dakota to meet with the Western States Land Commissioners who managed school land. The Land Commissioners were divided about a beneficiary organization. Some wanted to be in control and make CLASS a subcommittee of their organization. Other Land Commissioners welcomed the voices of beneficiaries of the trusts they managed. 

The CLASS organizers decided that a strong independent organization of PTAs, School Board Associations, National Education State Affiliates, and other supporters of public education was needed to assure the school trusts were managed with undivided loyalty to the schools as required by the legislation passed by Congress in creating statehood and granting the federal lands to support schools. 

From the beginning, CLASS has been an organization of volunteers who have advocated for the beneficiaries of trust lands and funds, as partners with the Land Commissioners. Currently, the commissioners’ organization has a redesigned logo that features an academic “mortarboard.”

The first annual CLASS conference was held on a shoestring in 2001 with representatives of 10 states at Ruby’s Inn in southern Utah. Oscar Wyatt, Boise Cascade, and Margaret Bird helped to fund attendance to that first conference by organizations with limited funds. Bylaws were adopted and a Board of Directors was created with one member elected by each of the major education groups, some at-large positions, and producers of the revenue from the land. CLASS received federal 501(c)3 non-profit status in 2002, committed to the training and research needed by education leaders to be effective advocates for the public school children. CLASS received two Congressional earmarks to meet the growing demand for services by member organizations in 16 states. 

In 2016, the Board of Directors changed the organization’s name to something that better described the job it was doing: Advocates for School Trust Lands.

ASTL continues to look for ways to help inform and support its members advocate for school trust beneficiaries in their own states. Some outstanding accomplishments in the two decades since the establishment of an organization of beneficiaries for school trust lands:

• Holding an annual conference and educating a thousand education leaders that “state lands” are really “school lands” held in trust solely for schools.
• CLASS informed education leaders in Colorado that three bills were filed in Congress to take the granted school lands away from the school beneficiaries and make them state lands. The Colorado education community went to work and killed all three bills.
• Oklahoma PTA President Cathy Post prevented a $5 million loss to their trust when the Land Board planned to refund grazing lease money to ranchers due to drought conditions by requesting an Attorney General opinion on the action which was determined to be illegal.
• Tim Donaldson asked the Utah State Board of Education to create a task force that included professionals and legislators to determine how best to assure professional investment of the State School Fund. The Task Force recommended legislation that created the School and Institutional Trust Fund Office and Board of Trustees. In the ensuing six years, the Utah State School Fund has grown from $1 billion to almost $3 billion. 
• Four members active in CLASS were appointed to state committees and task forces to help with decisions on trust land management (Renate Witte in New Mexico, Quentin Goodrich in Washington, Diana Oberbarnscheidt with the Orgon PTA, and Marguerite Herman in Wyoming).
• Marguerite Herman wrote a passionate opinion piece supporting schools when the Wyoming Land Board determined a wind farm could be placed on private ground but not on the intermingled school lands, denying the schools the income to please some people’s viewshed. The decision was reversed at the next Land Board meeting.
• Denise Dittrich of Minnesota was successful in creating a separate office within the Department of Natural Resources to manage the school trust lands in her state. She also created special legislative committees to provide oversight on the lands and funds. 
• Margaret Bird and Mel Brown in Utah were successful in getting legislation passed to create an office to advocate and protect trust interests in Utah.
• ASTL has filed a lawsuit in Montana to prevent the legislature from giving away water rights that are currently used on school lands. This suit is ongoing.
• Nevada ASTL members are now working actively to recover the 4 million acres they were shorted when Congress failed to recognize in 1864 that Nevada was the most arid state in the union and should be granted four sections per township, instead of only two sections that were granted at the time. Other less arid states (Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona) received four sections. 
• Tim Donaldson successfully lobbied full market value payment of $1.8 million annually for hunting on school trust lands. Past payments had been only a fraction of full market value.
• A member in Montana invited the state’s Attorney General to speak to the PTA about school trust lands to help their members understand the lands were to be managed for schools, not the state.