At $51,316 per pupil, Big Sur Unified ranks #19 of 1880 California districts by per-pupil spending (California districts). NCES F-33 finance data.
19
Total Enrollment
1
Schools
$51,316
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 $51,316 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 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).
Enrollment across the district's NCES-reporting campuses fell 10.5% between 2022-23 and 2023-24 (19 to 17 students), and the student-teacher ratio held roughly steady, per the NCES Common Core of Data annual universe files.
Of the district's $1,038,000 in reported FY2023 expenditures, 46.3% went to instruction, 46% to support services, and 2% 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.
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 largest entity. Grade band: combined. 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 Sur Unified reports 63.2% free-lunch eligibility
The reported share sits between 62.5% and 75%, above a simple majority but below the highest descriptive band used here. Title I operates under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA, 2015), but its statutory allocation uses additional LEA-level counts and rules not represented by this average. This percentage is an economic-need context measure; it does not establish a Title I award, show dollars received, or describe how funds are distributed among campuses.
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.