The Utah School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration (SITLA) presented the Utah PTA with its 2015 Friend of the Trust award. While presenting the honor to Utah PTA President Liz Zentner, SITLA Director Kevin Carter cited the PTA’s many years of support to the agency and the accompanying growth of the state’s Permanent School Fund. “The PTA has always advocated wise management of Utah’s 3.3 million acres of school trust lands for the benefit of Utah students,” stated Carter. “This powerful and tireless group is instrumental in the growth of the Permanent School Fund as a perpetual source of education funding.” SITLA manages trust lands largely on behalf of the public school system. SITLA deposits revenues into the Permanent School Fund, which has a current balance of just under $2 billion. The Fund balance has grown from $86 million in 1994, when the administrative oversight was restructured and SITLA was created by the legislature. Interest and dividends from the Fund are distributed to individual K-12 schools annually and totaled $40 million for the current school year. Carter also presented Zentner with a framed map of Utah highlighting the 3.3 million acres of land held in trust exclusively for Utah’s public schools. Since 1994, SITLA has generated $1.4 billion for Utah’s public schools while helping to preserve and protect more than 560,000 acres of Utah land through federal and state land exchanges and other proactive stewardship projects.