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Glendive, Montana - 1 schools
At $15,778 per pupil, Deer Creek Elem ranks #202 of 394 Montana districts by per-pupil spending (Montana districts). NCES F-33 finance data.
20
Total Enrollment
1
Schools
$15,778
Per-Pupil Spending
Combined
School Types
District-Level NCES Analysis
Deer Creek Elem operates 1 public schools serving 20 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 Dawson County.
Per-pupil expenditure runs $15,778 according to the NCES F-33 School District Finance Survey, in the lower half of 394 Montana districts by per-pupil spending. See how Montana compares in our national per-pupil spending analysis. The funding mix is 42.3% local, 34.5% state, and 23.2% federal, a balanced mix across local, state, and federal sources, spreading budget risk across funding cycles rather than concentrating it in one.
a 18:1 student-counselor ratio, that meets the ASCA-recommended benchmark, and 16.7% chronic absenteeism from the 2021-22 Civil Rights Data Collection. Demographically, the student body averages 83.3% White, 5.6% Hispanic or Latino across the district's schools.
Its largest campus is Deer Creek School, enrolling 18 students (100% of the district's total enrollment).
Deer Creek School accounts for 90.0% of all Deer Creek Elem student enrollment
That is an overwhelming concentration, leaving the rest of Deer Creek Elem a distant remainder — means Deer Creek Elem-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.
Deer Creek Elem student-counselor ratio is 18:1 — well below typical (typically associated with unusually small scale or exceptionally high per-unit investment)
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 Values this far below typical often correlate with unusually small scale or population characteristics rather than higher resource budgets per se — worth checking whether the underlying denominator is itself an outlier.
Deer Creek Elem chronic absenteeism rate is 16.7% — near the typical range (US average ~28) — aligned with the national post-pandemic baseline of roughly 28% chronic absenteeism
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 Variation between sub-units within Deer Creek Elem is typically wider than the Deer Creek Elem-aggregate figure suggests.