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State Board hears annual School Trust report on lands, revenues and new projects
Summary
State education board members received the annual report on the School Trust system covering how trust lands generate revenue, who manages the funds, recent projects including geothermal and carbon-sequestration leases, and ongoing work to clarify statutes and increase board involvement.
Paula Plant, director of the School Children’s Trust at the Utah State Board of Education, told the board the School Trust system must deliver an annual report because the State Board is the largest beneficiary of school lands and funds.
The report outlined how trust lands granted at statehood generate revenue that the School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration (SITLA) manages, and how the School and Institutional Trust Fund Office (SITFO) invests those receipts and returns distributions to schools. “The land office manages the land. They send the revenue to the fund office and the fund office manages the money,” Plant said.
Why this matters: The trust lands and the revenue they produce are not state tax dollars; they are permanent trust assets intended to benefit public education and two specialized beneficiaries, the schools for the deaf and blind. The board heard that the system’s annual distributions and fund management affect school budgets statewide and that recent statutory and policy work aims to increase clarity and Board involvement.
Paula Plant and other trust-system speakers described the roles of the…
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