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Big Pine, California - 2 schools
At $27,805 per pupil, Big Pine Unified ranks #79 of 1862 California districts by per-pupil spending (California districts). NCES F-33 finance data.
157
Total Enrollment
2
Schools
$27,805
Per-Pupil Spending
Elementary, High
School Types
District-Level NCES Analysis
Big Pine Unified operates 2 public schools serving 157 students, placing it among the smallest districts in California. The school portfolio breaks down into 1 elementary, 1 high 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 Inyo County.
Per-pupil expenditure runs $27,805 according to the NCES F-33 School District Finance Survey, among the top 187 of 1862 California districts by per-pupil spending. See how California compares in our national per-pupil spending analysis. The funding mix is 65.9% local, 14.9% state, and 19.1% federal, a local-revenue-heavy mix that leaves the district more exposed to property-tax swings and local ballot measures than state-funded peers.
a 400.5:1 student-counselor ratio, well above the ASCA benchmark though still under the roughly 408:1 national average, and 52.6% chronic absenteeism from the 2021-22 Civil Rights Data Collection. Demographically, the student body averages 30.6% Hispanic or Latino, 19.1% White across the district's schools.
Its largest campus is Big Pine Elementary, enrolling 121 students (80% of the district's total enrollment). Its smallest is Big Pine High, at 30 students, a 4x enrollment spread across the district's campuses.
Big Pine Elementary accounts for 77.1% of all Big Pine Unified student enrollment
That is an overwhelming concentration, leaving the rest of Big Pine Unified a distant remainder — means Big Pine Unified-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.
Big Pine Unified has higher-than-average Title I eligibility — 59.3% of the population qualifies for free or reduced-price lunch
free or reduced-price lunch eligibility is the federal threshold for Title I funding allocations, established under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA, 2015). Areas above 75% eligibility receive concentration grants on top of the basic Title I formula. Regions with eligibility this high typically draw a substantially larger federal funding share relative to their local tax base, which can either offset or reinforce existing gaps depending on allocation policy.
Big Pine Unified student-counselor ratio is 401:1 — high (typically associated with staffing constraints that limit per-student counselor time; CRDC data shows higher ratios cluster in larger urban systems)
student-counselor ratio is the simplest comparative metric but it does not capture the full picture: the ratio counts FTE counselors against total enrollment, districts that contract intervention or social-emotional staff outside the counselor classification may be under-counted Higher values may reflect larger urban scale or recent resource constraints that have widened the gap.
Big Pine Unified chronic absenteeism rate is 52.6% — 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.