Welcome to America's School Trust Library. Explore the history of land
set aside to support public schools and the records of how states manage
it. The Library brings together books, maps, financial reports, legal
documents, and news so you can see what was promised, what the land
earned, and what each state makes public. This tour shows you where to
begin.
School Trusts
Compare states and State land maps
Use Compare states to explore differences in school trust lands, funds,
and public records. Use State land maps to find available maps and see
what each state publishes about the location of its trust lands.
Compare school trust funds and payments to schools across states.
Trust finances shows how well each figure is supported by sources and
makes gaps in the available financial information clear.
Browse Books & documents for reading organized by topic, including
history, laws, and research. For information about a particular state,
choose Find your state under School Trusts in the menu.
The Writing Room is open to readers. Browse a draft handbook on
school trust law; The Forgotten
Forever Gift to Public Schools, a history; Who Steals from
Children, the Oregon record; and Stewards of the Republic,
ideas for the future. Read essays on building institutions that
support public schools for generations.
School trust news follows developments in school trust lands and funds,
including court filings, hearings, and settlements. Commentary shares
contributors' views on what the records show. A free Library Card lets
you track your reading and contribute to the Library.
Bounded research tasks the Library needs done. Pick one, finish it, leave
something durable behind.
What is a mission?
A mission is a small, specific, finishable piece of Library work. The model
is the National Archives’ Citizen Archivist program: instead of asking
contributors to volunteer in the abstract, the institution publishes a
catalog of concrete tasks — transcribe this page, tag this photograph,
verify this citation — each sized to be completed in a sitting or two, and
each producing an artifact that lives in the public record.
The Library’s missions follow that pattern. Each one names a specific
gap in the substrate, an estimated effort, the kind of work involved, and
the artifact you will leave behind when it is done. Some missions are open
and unclaimed; some are in progress; some are already assigned to a
contributor or cohort and are listed here for transparency.
To claim a mission today, send a short note to the Library inbox saying
which mission you’re picking up and how to credit you. The “claim it”
buttons below open a pre-addressed email; a real claim flow lands with the
next Library Card release.
The board
Twelve missions on the board. The catalog grows as the Library’s reading
turns up gaps; check back, or subscribe to the Newsroom for new postings.
Find Oregon's 1859 Admissions Act citation chain
Open
Citation work · Estimated effort: 4–8 hours
Trace the Oregon 1859 Admissions Act through to its codified successors and the state-court and federal-court opinions that have construed its school-trust grant. Produce a clean citation chain ready for the Library’s reference apparatus.
Claim this mission
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Verify Utah school-trust 2024 fund-balance disclosure against state DOL
Assigned
Verification · Estimated effort: 2–4 hours
Compare the figure the Library currently shows for Utah’s 2024 fund balance against the Utah School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration (SITLA) and the state Division of Finance disclosures. Flag any discrepancy; cite both sources.
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Locate Mississippi's most recent fund-corpus audit
Open
Document retrieval · Estimated effort: 2–4 hours
Identify and link the most recent publicly available audit of the Mississippi school-trust fund corpus. If no current audit exists, document the absence with a state-records-request trail.
Claim this mission
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Verify CSF Reports for Oregon FY2022, FY2023, FY2024
Assigned
Verification · Estimated effort: 4–6 hours
Pull the Oregon Common School Fund annual reports for fiscal years 2022, 2023, and 2024. Verify the headline figures the Library currently displays match the source PDFs; note any year-over-year inconsistencies for the editorial team.
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Identify state-level enabling-act citations for the 50 states
Open
Atlas — citation work · Estimated effort: 6–10 hours per cluster
For each state cluster (one mission per cluster — typically 5–8 states), identify the enabling-act citation, the original constitutional school-trust clause, and the codified successor. Output is a per-state citation block for the Atlas.
Claim this mission
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Transcribe the Margaret Bird interview transcripts
In progress
Transcription · Estimated effort: 1–2 hours per recording
Transcribe the seven Margaret Bird video recordings (PXL_20250810_* and adjacent dates) currently held in the Library’s primary-source layer (how this works). Output is a clean Markdown transcript per recording, with timestamps, ready for public release as a Founders’ Library entry.
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Verify Bogert & Hess publisher citation (W.W. Norton vs. Belknap/Harvard)
Resolve a known ambiguity in the Library’s Scholarship section: the publisher of Bogert & Hess, “Law of Trusts and Trustees,” 2009 edition. Confirm against a library catalog (LOC or a major university library) and update the Library’s reference page accordingly.
Claim this mission
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Tag and describe the historical photograph archive
Open
Archival description · Estimated effort: Ongoing — by batch
Work through the Library’s historical photograph archive (period images of one-room schoolhouses, land-grant survey crews, treasury vaults, period reading rooms). For each image, write a one-paragraph descriptive caption, tag the era and location, and cite the source institution.
Claim this mission
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Confirm legislator contact addresses for the 2026 Oregon Legislature
Pull the current contact roster for Oregon legislators (House and Senate) for the 2026 session. Verify district numbers and committee assignments. Output is a tidy CSV the Newsroom can use when alerting readers to a relevant hearing.
Claim this mission
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Identify NASTL July 2026 conference location and speaker schedule
Open
Calendar · Estimated effort: 1–2 hours
Identify the location, dates, and posted speaker schedule for the National Association of State Trust Lands (NASTL) summer 2026 conference. Output is a single Library calendar entry plus any links the Newsroom will reference.
Claim this mission
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Identify SLB trustees, Treasurer, and Secretary of State for each litigation-active state
Open
Atlas — civic infrastructure · Estimated effort: ~30 minutes per state
For each state with active or recently active school-trust litigation (Oregon, Wyoming, Arizona, Nebraska, and the comparative cohort), identify the State Land Board trustees, the State Treasurer, and the Secretary of State who currently sit ex officio on or near the school-trust apparatus. Output: a name + email + role per row, ready for the Atlas to reference. Sized so a State Correspondent can do one state in an afternoon.
Claim this mission
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Index the Margaret Bird interview transcripts to The Eighth Anchor sections
Open
Substrate cross-link · Estimated effort: 2–4 hours per transcript
Once a Margaret Bird transcript clears the transcription mission, cross-link its substantive moments to the eight sections of The Eighth Anchor and the chapter cohorts of Schools of the Republic. Output is a per-transcript index — timestamp, the section or chapter it speaks to, and a one-sentence editorial note — so the public-release transcript pages carry their own reference apparatus.
Claim this mission
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Why a mission board
The Library is built on a public substrate, but a substrate cannot keep
itself current. State agencies post new audits; legislatures hold new
hearings; books get re-issued by new publishers; photographs sit
undescribed on a hard drive. A mission board makes the maintenance work of
the Library visible — and shareable. It is also the surface a State
Correspondent or Co-Librarian can use to pick up something concrete on a
slow afternoon.
For background on the contributor roles these missions plug into, see
How to contribute. For the public ledger of who
has done what, see
The Watchful Crew.
