A catch-up issue — the school-trust moves worth knowing from the back half of May and the first week of June, all in one place.

Montana's Land Board overhauls trust-land exchange policy for the first time since 2004

The Montana Board of Land Commissioners voted 4-0-1 on May 18 to adopt the state's first land-exchange policy revision in more than two decades, shifting some decision-making authority from the Department of Natural Resources and Conservation back to the five elected Land Board members — the governor, secretary of state, attorney general, state auditor, and superintendent of public instruction. State Auditor James Brown, who sponsored the revisions, called the change a "red-tape reduction" that restores "the financial and final decisions making back into the hands" of the board. The new policy keeps at least seven public-review checkpoints, says trust land should generally be valued for its highest and best use, and tells DNRC to apply a "commercially reasonable discount" to parcels lacking documented legal access. Gov. Greg Gianforte abstained after the board declined his request for an additional 30-day public-scoping period.

Coverage: Montana Free Press, Daily Inter Lake, Daily Montanan.

Minnesota's Permanent School Fund amendment is headed to the November ballot

Minnesota's 2026 legislative session ended May 18 with the Permanent School Fund constitutional amendment in the final education package. November ballots will now ask voters whether to raise the annual distribution from the Permanent School Fund to school districts from 2.5 percent to 4.5 percent of the fund's three-year average net asset value. The proposal cleared the floor vote, the conference-committee report, and the end-of-session package; oversight now sits with the Legislative Permanent School Fund Commission, chaired by Sen. Mary Kunesh, as the measure moves to the voters. Minnesota's Permanent School Fund draws revenue from roughly 2.5 million acres of state-managed school trust lands.

Coverage: Session Daily (Minnesota House), HF 3900 bill text.

New Mexico's May oil-and-gas lease sale draws $11.46 million for the school trust

The New Mexico State Land Office's May 19 sealed-bid oil-and-gas lease sale produced $11,458,516 in high bids across six tracts totaling 1,001.85 acres. The sale is part of the office's standing third-Tuesday-of-every-month cadence: oil-and-gas tracts on state trust minerals offered for competitive sealed bids, with bonus payments flowing to the Permanent Land Grant Fund and the Land Maintenance Fund and public schools the largest beneficiary class. The state sale ran one day before the U.S. Bureau of Land Management's record-setting federal lease sale in the Delaware Basin — different trust posture and different dollar magnitudes, but a measure of how much subsurface activity is moving through the region this spring.

Coverage: NM State Land Office — Lease Sale Notices and Results.

Minnesota nears an 80,000-acre Boundary Waters sale to the Forest Service

In a longer-running story now advancing toward completion, Minnesota is moving to sell roughly 80,000 acres of school trust land inside the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness to the U.S. Forest Service. Wilderness rules have long barred the state from generating revenue on these acres for the Permanent School Fund, leaving the land locked. The Forest Service would buy it with a federal appropriation from the Land and Water Conservation Fund; proceeds — expected between $20 million and $40 million — would flow into the Permanent School Fund, and the transfer is anticipated to be completed by the end of 2026. The deal would finally resolve a compensation question left open since the 1978 act that established the wilderness.

Coverage: Minnesota Office of School Trust Lands, Star Tribune, Quetico Superior.

America's school trust lands move through state legislatures, courts, agency boardrooms, and lease desks — rarely all visible in one news cycle. This Newsroom's job is to put the moves in one place, so anyone who cares about these lands can stay current with what is being done to them.

How school trust lands work

Every state admitted after Ohio received its school lands inside a survey grid: townships six miles square, divided into 36 numbered sections, each section a square mile of 640 acres. Section 16 — and in some later states, additional numbered sections — was reserved for schools. The geometry was not incidental. A child anywhere in the state was supposed to be inside a township that carried its own school endowment. The grid is why "school lands" sit in roughly the same place across the western half of the country, state after state.

Published by Oregon Advocates for School Trust Lands (OASTL), 12875 Kings Valley Highway, Monmouth, OR 97361. Editor: Dave Sullivan. Editorial methodology: schooltrusts.net/newsroom/about/.