At $22,104 per pupil, Bonny Doon Union Elementary ranks #289 of 1880 California districts by per-pupil spending (California districts). NCES F-33 finance data.
115
Total Enrollment
1
Schools
$22,104
Per-Pupil Spending
Elementary
School Types
District-Level NCES Analysis
Bonny Doon Union Elementary operates 1 public schools serving 115 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 Cruz County.
Per-pupil expenditure runs $22,104 according to the NCES F-33 School District Finance Survey, in the upper half of 1880 California districts by per-pupil spending. See how California compares in our national per-pupil spending analysis. The funding mix is 71.3% local, 17.4% state, and 11.3% 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 230:1 student-counselor ratio, that meets the ASCA-recommended benchmark, and 43.5% chronic absenteeism from the 2021-22 Civil Rights Data Collection. Demographically, the student body averages 70.7% White, 14.1% Hispanic or Latino, 3.3% African American across the district's schools.
Its largest campus is Bonny Doon Elementary, enrolling 92 students (100% of the district's total enrollment).
Enrollment across the district's NCES-reporting campuses fell 15.7% between 2022-23 and 2023-24 (115 to 97 students), and the student-teacher ratio tightened by 2.6 students per teacher as staffing held steadier than enrollment, per the NCES Common Core of Data annual universe files.
Of the district's $2,542,000 in reported FY2023 expenditures, 58.8% went to instruction, 40.2% 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.
Bonny Doon Elementary accounts for 80.0% of all Bonny Doon Union Elementary student enrollment
That is an overwhelming concentration, leaving the rest of Bonny Doon Union Elementary a distant remainder — means Bonny Doon 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.
Bonny Doon Union Elementary student-counselor ratio is 230:1 — low (typically associated with meeting or exceeding the American School Counselor Association (ASCA) recommended 250:1 benchmark, which correlates with stronger college and career counseling capacity)
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 Lower values often correlate with smaller scale and population characteristics rather than higher resource budgets per se.
Bonny Doon Union Elementary chronic absenteeism rate is 43.5% — 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.