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Utah's school land trust managers are offering a funding bonus to the school that takes the best picture on Instagram.

Students, teachers and principals have until April 30 to snap a photo showing how local trust land funding is used to receive one of two $1,000 cash prizes from the School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration, or SITLA, which manages 3.3 million acres held in trust for Utah schools.

"We wanted to show all the unique ways that schools are using their Land Trust funds," SITLA public information officer Deena Loyola said. "It's a rapidly-growing source of revenue and we're just amazed at what the schools come up with that really helps their communities."

Each year, Utah schools receive roughly $40 million from SITLA, which distributes the interest on a $2 billion land trust savings account on a per-student basis.

That translates to an average of $27,000 for each elementary school, $39,000 for each junior high and $46,000 for each high school in the state, Loyola said.

SITLA funds are unrestricted, meaning school officials are free to spend them on local needs, such as additional staff or technology purchases.

To be submitted to the contest, pictures should identify a school and be posted on Instagram with the hashtag #SitlaFunds15, or emailed to sitlanews@utah.gov.

Judges will select a winning photo for the first $1,000 prize, with the second prize going to the photo that receives the most likes on Instagram, Loyola said.

Manti High School Principal George Henrie was one of the first school administrators to submit a photo. His entry showed members of the school's band reading digital sheet music on iPads, which were purchased in part with SITLA funding.

Henrie said the scene was eye-opening as an administrator. He compared it to when students first started bringing graphing calculators to school, which changed the way mathematics was taught.

"To see that the kids are using [the iPads] in pep band at a ball game, it's extending to areas that we hadn't really thought about," he said.

If Manti High School wins one of the $1,000 prizes, Henrie said he'd like to use some of the funding for a schoolwide contest that encourages students to design apps or find other uses for the iPads.

But he added that he wasn't in the contest only for the money.