By Oregon Capital Chronicle

Oregon’s 197 school districts will get nearly $77 million in additional funding this year from revenues generated from leases and industry permitted on state lands.

That’s a record payout from the Common School Fund and $2.5 million more than schools received from the fund in 2024, officials from the Oregon Department of State Lands announced last week. It is $12 million more than districts received from the fund three years ago, in 2022.

All districts receive funding based on the number of students they serve. The average district in 2025 will get about $390,000 — enough to hire about five teachers, according to calculations from the Department of State Lands.

The Lincoln County School District will receive $681,710. The state’s largest district, Portland Public Schools, will get about $6.6 million. Districts typically receive their first payments in February and their second in July.

The Common School Fund has been around for more than 160 years, when Congress decided to allocate nearly 3.4 million acres of land to the newly established state of Oregon to be used to earn money for schools.

The state sold much of the land. Today, just about 20% of the original allotment remains producing revenue for schools through land leases to farmers and ranchers, tribal governments, logging companies and other businesses.

Those lands contribute about $7 million dollars a year to the Common School Fund, which is invested by the Oregon State Treasury. The fund today is worth nearly $2.4 billion, but just about 3.5% of the fund is distributed to schools annually.

“The Common School Fund is consistent and can be used for anything, from keeping the lights on to providing instruction,” Willamette High School social studies teacher Benjamin Dodds said in a news release.

The Bethel School District, where Dodds works, will get more than $800,000 in 2025 from the fund.

Schools get the bulk of their funding from the state’s general fund, which provides about two-thirds of school budgets. Gov. Tina Kotek has asked the Legislature to allocate almost $11.4 billion to Oregon schools for the 2025-26 and 2026-27 school years, up from $10.2 billion during the last two-year budget cycle.