SALT LAKE CITY — It's probably the only state education fund that parents have a direct say in, and it's increasing by millions of dollars every year.

In the coming school year, the School LAND Trust program will provide Utah public schools with $45.8 million — a 17 percent increase from last year and the largest payout in the program's 15-year history. It's money that goes straight into the hands of school community councils to spend entirely on student academics.

For the better part of a decade, the fund has helped bring up grades and graduation rates in places such as Highland High School, which this year will be awarded roughly $96,000 from the School LAND Trust.

"The good part about our program is it's the most locally controlled, on-the-ground money that gets spent," said Tim Donaldson, school trust director for the Utah State Board of Education. "It's not determined at the state level or even the district level how they have to spend it. So I think it helps maximize the impact of scarce resources."

Established in the Utah Enabling Act, the School Institutional Trust Fund is a permanent account now $2 billion strong that takes in revenue from 3.3 million acres of Utah land managed by the School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration, known as SITLA.

The principle amount is never spent, but interest and dividends are given to schools for everything from hiring teachers to building chemistry labs. Annual distributions are now more than five times what they were in 2004, which produced $8.3 million for Utah schools.

Schools are guaranteed a base rate that totals 10 percent of the statewide appropriation, with the remaining 90 percent based on student headcount. This year, Granger High School is expected to receive about $198,000, the largest amount ever received by a single school from the fund.

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"It's growing and it should continue to grow," Donaldson said.

While the fund currently represents only 1.5 percent of the overall education budget for the state, Donaldson said in "another generation" it could come to represent as much as 10 percent of the state's education budget.

"It's such an important program. We can't afford to waste this in Utah," he said.

That's advice Highland High School has lived by. In 2006, the Salt Lake school used the funds to start its Freshman Success Program, designed to seek out struggling ninth-graders and provide intensive, yet welcoming academic intervention.

When the program first started, the school's 450 freshmen collectively had more than 800 failing grades, according to Principal Chris Jenson.

"That just shocked us," Jenson said.

The school hired three aides to run the Freshman Success Program and help students complete individual assignments, sometimes outside of class. Students also get counseling on attendance and other challenges impeding academic success.

Over the past nine years, the number of failing grades has gradually dropped into the 200s, Jenson said.

"We see a better overall GPA. Kids are better prepared to move onto the next level. It's just been a real great program and a great way to use those trust land funds," he said. "We have real positive trends all the way through, and that includes attendance data. The program itself has affected not just academic performance, but it's affected, I think, climate in general because those students view (the program) as a real safe haven.

"If it weren't for the trust land funds, I think that we might see maybe more students going to alternative high schools," he said. "I think that it's really allowed us to use our data to target those areas that need the most support."

Steve Prasad is chairman of the Community Council for Highland High School, where his daughter attends. He said having the school trust funds administered by the council allows parents to oversee how those dollars are spent to improve student performance.

"It really provides some buy-in with the parents. We really have a say in what goes on in the schools with land trust funds," Prasad said. "It's really nice because even though the school maybe identifies a need, sometimes there are other things that parents might see that might need to be supplemented."

Because schools are awarded funding from the permanent account's interest and dividends, which can see rapid growth and decline with the economy, lawmakers are pushing to revise the statute to keep yearly appropriations steady.

The changes in both federal and state law could likely result in schools being given a percentage of the funds based on a rolling five-year average instead of the full amount each year.

Jenson said he hopes the new statute will ensure that schools can depend on a minimum level of funding year after year.

"From the school's point of view, anytime we can maintain stability and we can rely on at least a minimum funding level so that we know that those programs can go forward, that's a good thing," he said.

Donaldson said Utah's fund will continue its rapid growth as lawmakers invest in the permanent fund and as SITLA generates revenue from oil, gas, mining, real estate development and other land management projects.

"I think the real thing is just the big long-term potential that this has," he said. "It's tax free and it's growing and it really should grow as long as we run it right to help better fund schools."

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