Ohio turns trees into supplies for poor school districts.

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Ohio's Trees to Textbooks forest management program is providing money for computers, school supplies and other needs of the state's poorest school districts.

Eighteen districts got $743,420 from the sale of timber last year cut from 1,500 acres of the state's 184,000 acres of forest. Schools get 40 percent of any revenue generated from any logging project on state land.

Bill Schultz of the Ohio Division of Forestry notes that the state department has been sending money to counties and townships from timber sales for well over 20 years. But it was only about three years ago, he said, that legislators decided to chip in for school districts.

"There are no property taxes paid on state and federal lands," he adds. "And those taxes support our schools. So the legislature thought it would be a good idea to put money from state...