At $43,467 per pupil, Big Lagoon Union Elementary ranks #25 of 1880 California districts by per-pupil spending (California districts). NCES F-33 finance data.
15
Total Enrollment
1
Schools
$43,467
Per-Pupil Spending
Elementary
School Types
District-Level NCES Analysis
Big Lagoon Union Elementary operates 1 public schools serving 15 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 Humboldt County.
Per-pupil expenditure runs $43,467 according to the NCES F-33 School District Finance Survey, among the top 188 of 1880 California districts by per-pupil spending. See how California compares in our national per-pupil spending analysis. The funding mix is 38.2% local, 55.4% state, and 6.4% federal, a state-revenue-heavy mix that insulates the district somewhat from local property-tax volatility, though it ties funding to state budget cycles.
and 73.3% chronic absenteeism from the 2021-22 Civil Rights Data Collection. Demographically, the student body averages 6.7% White across the district's schools.
Its largest campus is Big Lagoon Elementary, enrolling 15 students (100% of the district's total enrollment).
Enrollment across the district's NCES-reporting campuses grew 33.3% between 2022-23 and 2023-24 (15 to 20 students), while the student-teacher ratio widened by 2.5 students per teacher, per the NCES Common Core of Data annual universe files.
Of the district's $657,000 in reported FY2023 expenditures, 46.3% went to instruction, 48.4% to support services, and 0% to capital outlay, support-services-heavy relative to typical districts, reflecting spending on transportation, administration, or student services. Figures come from the NCES F-33 School District Finance Survey's function-level breakdown, not the aggregate per-pupil figure above.
Big Lagoon Elementary accounts for 100.0% of all Big Lagoon Union Elementary student enrollment
That is an overwhelming concentration, leaving the rest of Big Lagoon Union Elementary a distant remainder — means Big Lagoon Union Elementary-wide averages can mask substantial variation outside the largest entity. Grade band: elementary. The share measures enrollment concentration only; it does not establish how the district allocates programs, capital, or staff. Because it contains a majority of the affected population, enrollment-weighted aggregates will sit closer to this entity's reported fields than to those of smaller peers; an unweighted entity count answers a different question.
Big Lagoon Union Elementary chronic absenteeism rate is 73.3% — well above typical (typically associated with unusually large scale or acute resource constraints)
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 Values this far above typical often signal acute resource constraints or a structurally different scale than most peers — worth reading alongside the underlying counts, not the ratio alone.