Minnesota sends Permanent School Fund constitutional amendment to the November ballot

The Minnesota Legislature passed the conference-committee version of HF3900 / SF3593 on May 16, sending a constitutional amendment to the November 2026 ballot. The amendment asks voters 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, beginning July 1, 2027. The conference committee adopted the report 7-1 on May 13; the only chamber-to-chamber sticking point — whether a future two-thirds supermajority could adjust the percentage — was resolved by saying it cannot. Senator Mary Kunesh sponsored the Senate version; Representative Spencer Igo sponsored the House version. Minnesota's Permanent School Fund draws revenue from roughly 2.5 million acres of state-managed school trust lands.

Coverage: Session Daily (Minnesota House), KAXE, Grand Rapids Herald-Review.

Montana Land Board member makes the public case for overhauling trust-land exchanges

Four days before the May 18 Montana Board of Land Commissioners meeting, State Auditor James Brown — one of the five statewide elected officials who sit on the Land Board — made the public case for updating the board's trust-land exchange policy. Brown's column, carried earlier this spring in regional papers and republished by his office on May 14, argues that the existing exchange process has not been revised in two decades and that the checkerboard geometry of Montana's school trust lands — sections 16 and 36 in each township, often isolated by surrounding private holdings — leaves hundreds of parcels both inaccessible to the public and underperforming for the schools the trust is meant to fund. Brown proposes streamlined appraisals and expedited timelines while preserving the public-input and transparency requirements.

Coverage: Bozeman Daily Chronicle, Flathead Beacon, MSU Exponent.

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 week's 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

In the spring of 1785, before the Constitution existed, the Confederation Congress passed the Land Ordinance and reserved Section 16 of every six-mile-square township in the western public domain for the support of schools. Two years later the Northwest Ordinance gave that reservation its philosophical floor: "schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged." 1785 is the gift. 1787 is the promise about the gift. The American school project was federalized before religious liberty was — and a year before the Constitution.

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/.