Opinion: Washington’s broken trust

Dave Upthegrove's 80,000-acre forest ban is forcing rural school districts into state financial control and massive teacher layoffs. — Dave Upthegrove’s 80,000-acre forest ban is forcing rural school districts into state financial control and massive teacher layoffs.

🎧 Upthegrove’s Forest Ban Bankrupts Rural Schools

Nancy Churchill explains how Dave Upthegrove’s green agenda is starving rural Washington schools

Nancy Churchill
Dangerous Rhetoric

Nestled in the foothills of the North Cascades, the Mount Baker School District is bleeding. Facing a budget deficit exceeding $1 million, the district has been forced into “binding conditions,” with the state now controlling its day-to-day finances. Officials have slashed around 30 employees and increased class sizes. The main culprit? A precipitous drop in timber revenue from state trust lands — roughly $1 million per year gone.

Nancy Churchill

This is not an isolated tragedy. In Eatonville, near Mount Rainier, students have suffered injuries on a dilapidated track and field the district cannot afford to repair. Sedro-Woolley School District watched its DNR revenue collapse from over $3 million annually to just $150,000, costing more than 20 jobs.

Rural Washington schools are being squeezed dry not by bad luck, but by deliberate policy choices from Lands Commissioner Dave Upthegrove. His unilateral decision to sideline nearly 80,000 acres of productive forest land is a direct betrayal of the state’s legal trust obligations. This isn’t environmental stewardship. It’s a regressive tax on rural kids, teachers, and working families.

The ironclad legal mandate

Since Washington became a state in 1889, millions of acres of trust lands were granted by the federal government specifically to generate revenue for public schools, counties, fire districts, and other essential services. The Department of Natural Resources is legally required to manage these lands for the benefit of defined beneficiaries — not as a personal carbon offset project for urban environmentalists.

In 2022, the Washington State Supreme Court issued a unanimous ruling in Conservation Northwest v. Commissioner of Public Lands that should have ended this debate. The Court affirmed that DNR owes a fiduciary duty of “undivided loyalty” to the trust beneficiaries. The constitutional phrase “held in trust for all the people” is satisfied by generating revenue that funds schools and local services — not by indulging anti-logging activists. The Court explicitly rejected attempts to prioritize “broader public interests” over timber revenue for the designated beneficiaries.

Upthegrove’s unilateral assault

On his very first day in office in 2024, Upthegrove paused 23 timber sales. Months later, he announced the permanent removal of approximately 79,876 acres of older forest from active management. These aren’t just any acres. The heaviest impacts fall on State Forest Transfer and Purchase lands that directly benefit counties and local services.

An independent Community Impact Calculator developed by the American Forest Resource Council lays bare the damage: Skamania County stands to lose an estimated $123 million in revenue over the next two decades. In Clallam County, school districts like Quillayute Valley and Port Angeles face millions in lost funding.

Statewide, DNR timber sales have plummeted from $186 million in 2022 to $134 million last year. That’s not mere market fluctuation — it’s policy. Because schools are paid only when trees are actually harvested — sometimes years after the sale — the funding has become dangerously “inconsistent and unreliable.” Districts cannot plan, cannot budget, and are left cutting teachers while facilities crumble.

The failed excuses from Olympia

Superintendent Chris Reykdal and Commissioner Upthegrove claim timber funding is “outdated” and “volatile.” They argue the Legislature should fully fund schools instead. They are half right. Yes, the state has chronically underfunded education. But you don’t solve one failure by sabotaging the revenue source rural districts were explicitly promised.

Reykdal admits that seven years ago the rules changed so districts could keep timber dollars on top of regular funding. Now those same districts are being punished for depending on money the state told them they could count on.

Upthegrove promises carbon markets, thinning projects, and utility poles will replace the lost income. This is wishful thinking. Older forests were the most lucrative stands. Pretending otherwise insults rural communities already facing budget shortfalls and potential county-level financial collapse.

Time to restore the trust

Rural Washington school districts and county governments are not powerless against Commissioner Upthegrove’s unilateral 80,000-acre set-aside. They possess clear, well-established legal standing to sue the Commissioner, DNR, and the Board of Natural Resources for breach of fiduciary duty.

Washington’s state trust lands are real, enforceable trusts created by the 1889 Enabling Act, the state constitution, and statutes. The state acts as trustee and owes the defined beneficiaries — including K-12 schools and counties — the same common-law duties as a private trustee: undivided loyalty, prudent management, and revenue generation for the beneficiaries’ benefit.

Precedent confirms this power. In County of Skamania v. State (1984), Skamania County successfully sued the state for breach of fiduciary duty in trust land management. The Washington Supreme Court held that the state is subject to enforceable trustee duties, including undivided loyalty “to the exclusion of all other interests,” and that beneficiaries can sue to enforce them.

More recently, coalitions of counties, school districts (including Sedro-Woolley and Quillayute Valley), fire districts, and others filed similar suits over reduced timber harvests and revenue, advancing claims for breach of fiduciary duty, declaratory relief, and injunctive relief. Courts have never questioned their standing.

Time to honor the promise

The Habitat Conservation Plan has already removed half of western Washington’s trust lands from active management. The beneficiaries have sacrificed enough. Districts like Mount Baker, Eatonville, and Sedro-Woolley aren’t asking for charity. They are demanding the state honor a 137-year-old promise embedded in the Washington Constitution and the 1889 Enabling Act.

School districts and counties can file in superior court seeking an injunction against further set-asides, an order to restore the affected 79,876 acres to productive status, and an accounting for lost revenue.

The Legislature and the Board of Natural Resources should also act immediately to provide oversight and reverse the order. Long-term, lawmakers should stabilize school funding to reduce volatility — but that reform must never come at the expense of maximizing sustainable revenue from the remaining trust lands.

Rural schools and counties have both the moral high ground and the legal tools to fight back. It’s time they use them.

Put kids before ideology

Washington’s trust lands were never meant to be a playground for climate virtue signaling. They were a gift to educate our children and sustain the communities that actually work these forests. Dave Upthegrove’s agenda is turning that gift into a broken promise. Rural students, teachers, and families deserve better than empty forests and empty classrooms. It’s time to put kids before ideology. Anything less is dangerous rhetoric from the very officials who swore to protect public education.

Nancy Churchill is a writer, educator, and conservative activist in rural eastern Washington state. She chairs the Ferry County Republican Party and advocates for effective citizen influence through Influencing Olympia Effectively. She may be reached at DangerousRhetoric@pm.me. The opinions expressed in Dangerous Rhetoric are her own. Dangerous Rhetoric is available on Substack and X.