I have dedicated over fifty years to the management and protection of School Trust Lands across the United States. I write to underscore that the work of defending Oregon's school trust is among the most significant trust-integrity questions in the nation. Education trusts — one of the country's founding principles — were to be established in every new state as a condition of statehood. That promise was not optional, and it has not expired.
The Utah Model vs. the Oregon Reality
In Utah, I led reforms that transformed our permanent State School Fund from a small asset into a powerhouse. Structural changes to the management of school lands, prudent investment of the fund, and distributions directly to schools — the only beneficiary recognized by Congress in the statehood grants — grew the fund from $41 million to almost $4 billion. These changes provide over $134 million next year directly to classrooms. Like Oregon, before the reforms Utah distributed no funds to schools from its trust. The difference between then and now is not luck. It is the difference between treating a trust as a trust and treating it as a discretionary state asset.
Oregon stands at the other end of that spectrum. It holds the dubious distinction of being the only state in the Union to operate its school trust at a significant loss — and to have done so persistently. The trust has been managed in ways that turn its own beneficiaries into funders of the trust's overhead, instead of recipients of its return. The contrast between the Utah Model and the Oregon Reality is not a matter of climate, geology, or markets. It is a matter of doctrine: whether the state honors the fiduciary obligations it accepted at statehood, or substitutes other political objectives in their place.
Why This Work Matters Beyond Oregon
Sustained, disciplined work to enforce the fiduciary duties that Oregon owes its schools is more than a state-level controversy. It is a national reference case. When a state is held to the standards of trust law — undivided loyalty to beneficiaries, prudent management, distributions to schools rather than to state programs — that record becomes a template for every western state still holding school trust lands. Conversely, when a state is allowed to redefine "trust" as "state asset," that drift becomes a template too.
Supporting the legal and policy work needed to restore Oregon's school trust is therefore an investment in the integrity of school trusts across the country. The doctrine is not regional. The duty is not negotiable. And the beneficiaries — the schoolchildren the trust was created to serve — have already been patient long enough.
I strongly urge OSBA and its member districts to support this work. It is on behalf of your schools, and your children's future.
Sincerely,
Margaret Bird
Founder and President, Advocates for School Trust Lands