Education Commons^™

Alabama And Mississippi: A Case Study In School Trust Land Management, John Morgan Maynes

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

School trust lands are an enormous, yet often overlooked resource for public education. In some states, they have the potential to fund public education in an entirely tax-free manner, and they contribute tax-free funding for schools in many states. Before the Constitution of the United States was written, Congress established a system for granting lands to support common schools. However, there is a gap in the scholarly discourse about this legacy. Souder and Fairfax (1996) noted in their comprehensive work on school trust lands that “other than noting the initial grant to Ohio, most texts ignore the remaining details surrounding …