Recently in school trust history
Idaho Admission
Idaho admitted with sections 16 and 36 of each township granted in trust for schools. Idaho's Endowment Fund Investment Board continues to manage the proceeds today.
About ASTL
What We Do
Advocates for School Trust Lands is the only national nonprofit dedicated to ensuring states fulfill their fiduciary duties as trustees — safeguarding millions of acres and over $100 billion in school trust assets for the beneficiaries those trusts were created to serve: the public schools.
Three pillars
Every project ASTL takes on — a state report card, a piece of legislation, an amicus brief, a regional convening — maps to one of these three pillars.
Pillar 01
Advocate
ASTL proactively defends optimization of school trust lands through nonpartisan advocacy — holding trustees accountable through direct engagement, public testimony, and legal review when states fall short of their fiduciary duty.
Pillar 02
Educate
We provide expert knowledge to policymakers, parents, educators, and the public so stakeholders can see clearly how school trust lands and the permanent funds they generate translate into school funding.
Pillar 03
Collaborate
We unite diverse partners — government officials, educators, beneficiary organizations, and trust-land managers — to build coalitions that protect and expand school trust lands and permanent funds across the states.
Our mission
We hold states to their fiduciary duty as trustees of school trust lands — securing a robust and sustainable birthright for public schools through nonpartisan advocacy, education, and collaboration.
School trust lands are not surplus state acreage. They are a federally granted endowment, given to each state at statehood under terms a trustee cannot renegotiate — the beneficiaries are the schoolchildren of that state, and the duty runs to them in perpetuity. ASTL exists because, in too many states for too many decades, that duty has been treated as discretionary.
Source: schooltrustlands.org homepage and About Us hub, scraped 2026-05-15. The dedicated /coalition-table/what-we-do page on the live org site returned 404 at scrape time; this page synthesizes the three-pillars frame from the homepage until the source returns. (content pending — to be expanded when scrape is recovered)