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 school trust assets measured in the tens of billions of dollars for the beneficiaries those trusts were created to serve: the public schools. No reconciled fifty-state total exists; ASTL is rebuilding that accounting state by state.

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.

Meet the team → See the state map →