At $12,000 per pupil, Cottonwood Elem ranks #324 of 393 Montana districts by per-pupil spending (Montana districts). NCES F-33 finance data.
19
Total Enrollment
1
Schools
$12,000
Per-Pupil Spending
Combined
School Types
District-Level NCES Analysis
Cottonwood Elem operates 1 public schools serving 19 students, placing it among the smallest districts in Montana. 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 Gallatin County.
Per-pupil expenditure runs $12,000 according to the NCES F-33 School District Finance Survey, in the lower half of 393 Montana districts by per-pupil spending. See how Montana compares in our national per-pupil spending analysis. The funding mix is 37.6% local, 49.2% state, and 13.2% federal, a balanced mix across local, state, and federal sources, spreading budget risk across funding cycles rather than concentrating it in one.
and 12.5% chronic absenteeism from the 2021-22 Civil Rights Data Collection. Demographically, the student body averages 93.8% White across the district's schools.
Its largest campus is Cottonwood School, enrolling 16 students (100% of the district's total enrollment).
Cottonwood School accounts for 84.2% of all Cottonwood Elem student enrollment
That is an overwhelming concentration, leaving the rest of Cottonwood Elem a distant remainder — means Cottonwood Elem-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.
Cottonwood Elem chronic absenteeism rate is 12.5% — low (typically associated with lower-than-average attendance disruption; districts in this range often have attendance interventions, robust transportation, or smaller catchments that reduce barriers)
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 Lower values often correlate with smaller scale and population characteristics rather than higher resource budgets per se.