Cash-strapped California schools, as well as beleaguered school districts across the country, might be much more financially secure if their states hadn’t disposed of the “sacred” trusts given them by the federal government when they joined the union.
That’s the conclusion of A Magnificent Endowment: America’s School Land Trusts, a report recently released by the Center for the School of the Future at Utah State University. Almost from the nation’s founding, the federal government placed a high priority on public education, required new states to support it and granted them millions of acres of land in dedicated trusts to facilitate it.
In California’s case, 5.5 million acres throughout the state, granted in 1853 with the specific imperative that the land be held in trust to benefit public education, have dwindled to 469,000 acres.
Most of the California school lands are isolated parcels and many are in the desert. About one-fourth of the land is leased for revenue generating purposes. All net revenues from the use of school lands are deposited in the state treasury and credited to the Teachers Retirement Fund. In 2008-09, the Legislature borrowed $59 million from the fund to cover budget shortfalls.
By 1911, Fletcher Harper Swift of Columbia University was already reporting that two-thirds of the lands and funds granted by the federal government for the support of schools was gone. “In many states the permanent funds and the proceeds which should have been added to them have been so carelessly diverted, squandered, wasted and embezzled so shamefully, that what ought to be a magnificent endowment . . . has dwindled to an almost negligible sum,” he wrote.
Only 20 states still hold and administer 45 million acres of school trust lands out of the 134 million acres granted by the federal government. The other 30 states sold or converted the land into Permanent School Funds that were then often depleted to cover short-term needs.
California sold most of its land and now ranks 16th out of the 20 states that still have trust acreage.
The State Lands Commission is responsible for managing lands that the state has received from the federal government. The commission comprises the lieutenant governor, the state controller and the finance director, but no education officials.
–Ken Broder
To Learn More:
Federal Gift of Land to Schools Went Awry (by Jill Tucker, San Francisco Chronicle)
Where Did All the School-Trust Lands Go? (by Brian Maffly, Salt Lake Tribune)
A Magnificent Endowment: America’s School Land Trusts (Center for the School of the Future at Utah State University) (pdf)
History of the State Lands Commission (SLC website) (pdf)