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Solvang, California - 1 schools
At $18,318 per pupil, Ballard Elementary ranks #367 of 1862 California districts by per-pupil spending (California districts). NCES F-33 finance data.
118
Total Enrollment
1
Schools
$18,318
Per-Pupil Spending
Elementary
School Types
District-Level NCES Analysis
Ballard Elementary operates 1 public schools serving 118 students, placing it among the smallest districts in California. The school portfolio breaks down into 1 elementary schools, a small enough portfolio that most families will interact with nearly every campus in the district at some point. These enrollment and school figures come from the NCES Common Core of Data (CCD) 2024-25 release, and the district is based in Santa Barbara County.
Per-pupil expenditure runs $18,318 according to the NCES F-33 School District Finance Survey, in the upper half of 1862 California districts by per-pupil spending. See how California compares in our national per-pupil spending analysis. The funding mix is 75.8% local, 18.2% state, and 5.9% federal, a local-revenue-heavy mix that leaves the district more exposed to property-tax swings and local ballot measures than state-funded peers.
and 13.3% chronic absenteeism from the 2021-22 Civil Rights Data Collection. Demographically, the student body averages 78.8% White, 12.4% Hispanic or Latino, 1.8% Asian across the district's schools.
Its largest campus is Ballard Elementary, enrolling 113 students (100% of the district's total enrollment).
Ballard Elementary accounts for 95.8% of all Ballard Elementary student enrollment
That is an overwhelming concentration, leaving the rest of Ballard Elementary a distant remainder — means Ballard Elementary-wide averages can mask substantial variation outside the dominant entity. Grade band: elementary. A single dominant campus often anchors a district's program offerings and staffing patterns; the share helps explain why district-wide averages may not reflect the typical neighbourhood-school experience. When one entity dominates a region's footprint, its programmatic and budget decisions effectively set policy for a majority of the affected population.
Ballard Elementary chronic absenteeism rate is 13.3% — low (typically associated with lower-than-average attendance disruption; districts in this range often have attendance interventions, robust transportation, or smaller catchments that reduce barriers)
chronic absenteeism rate is the simplest comparative metric but it does not capture the full picture: a student is chronically absent if they miss ≥10% of enrolled days for any reason, illness, family obligations, or disengagement Lower values often correlate with smaller scale and population characteristics rather than higher resource budgets per se.