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Borrego Springs, California - 3 schools
An equity score of 70/100 ranks Borrego Springs Unified #278 of 1517 districts in California (state average 50). Derived live from how evenly resources are distributed across the district's schools.
At $22,186 per pupil, Borrego Springs Unified ranks #165 of 1862 California districts by per-pupil spending (California districts). NCES F-33 finance data.
358
Total Enrollment
3
Schools
$22,186
Per-Pupil Spending
Elementary, High
School Types
District-Level NCES Analysis
Borrego Springs Unified operates 3 public schools serving 358 students, placing it among the smallest districts in California. The school portfolio breaks down into 1 elementary, 1 high, 1 middle 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 San Diego County.
Per-pupil expenditure runs $22,186 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 38.0% local, 51.9% state, and 10.1% federal, a state-revenue-heavy mix that insulates the district somewhat from local property-tax volatility, though it ties funding to state budget cycles. The district's equity score is 70/100, ranked #278 of 1517 in California against a state average of 50, notably more even than the typical district in the state for how evenly funding reaches its schools.
Academic infrastructure includes 1 of 3 schools offering Advanced Placement (3 AP courses district-wide), a 463.6:1 student-counselor ratio, above both the ASCA benchmark and the roughly 408:1 national average, and 50.4% chronic absenteeism from the 2021-22 Civil Rights Data Collection. Demographically, the student body averages 86.7% Hispanic or Latino, 8.4% White, 0.8% Asian across the district's schools. Its most demographically mixed campus is Borrego Springs Elementary, with a diversity index of 29.8/100.
Its largest campus is Borrego Springs Elementary, enrolling 153 students (44% of the district's total enrollment).
Borrego Springs Elementary accounts for 42.7% of all Borrego Springs Unified student enrollment
That dominant concentration means Borrego Springs 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.
Borrego Springs Unified has higher-than-average Title I eligibility — 77.4% 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 — including this one — 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.
Borrego Springs Unified student-counselor ratio is 464:1 — 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.
Borrego Springs Unified chronic absenteeism rate is 50.4% — 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.