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Big Sur, California - 1 schools
At $61,588 per pupil, Big Sur Unified ranks #12 of 1862 California districts by per-pupil spending (California districts). NCES F-33 finance data.
19
Total Enrollment
1
Schools
$61,588
Per-Pupil Spending
Combined
School Types
District-Level NCES Analysis
Big Sur Unified operates 1 public schools serving 19 students, placing it among the smallest districts in California. The school portfolio breaks down into 1 combined 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 Monterey County.
Per-pupil expenditure runs $61,588 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 40.7% local, 56.9% state, and 2.4% 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 72.7% chronic absenteeism from the 2021-22 Civil Rights Data Collection. Demographically, the student body averages 63.6% White, 36.4% Hispanic or Latino across the district's schools.
Its largest campus is Pacific Valley (K-12), enrolling 11 students (100% of the district's total enrollment).
Pacific Valley (K-12) accounts for 57.9% of all Big Sur Unified student enrollment
That is an overwhelming concentration, leaving the rest of Big Sur Unified a distant remainder — means Big Sur Unified-wide averages can mask substantial variation outside the dominant entity. Grade band: combined. 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 Sur Unified has higher-than-average Title I eligibility — 63.2% 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). Eligibility here is approaching the 75% concentration-grant threshold; it does not yet unlock the extra funding tier but sits meaningfully above the baseline 50% majority mark. 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 Sur Unified chronic absenteeism rate is 72.7% — 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.