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Deer Lodge, Montana - 2 schools
An equity score of 40/100 ranks Deer Lodge Elem #58 of 141 districts in Montana (state average 38). Derived live from how evenly resources are distributed across the district's schools.
At $13,715 per pupil, Deer Lodge Elem ranks #257 of 394 Montana districts by per-pupil spending (Montana districts). NCES F-33 finance data.
426
Total Enrollment
2
Schools
$13,715
Per-Pupil Spending
Combined, Middle
School Types
District-Level NCES Analysis
Deer Lodge Elem operates 2 public schools serving 426 students, placing it among the smallest districts in Montana. The school portfolio breaks down into 1 combined, 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 Powell County.
Per-pupil expenditure runs $13,715 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 41.6% local, 39.0% state, and 19.4% federal, a balanced mix across local, state, and federal sources, spreading budget risk across funding cycles rather than concentrating it in one. The district's equity score is 40/100, ranked #58 of 141 in Montana against a state average of 38, in line with the typical spread seen across the state for how evenly funding reaches its schools.
a 212.5:1 student-counselor ratio, that meets the ASCA-recommended benchmark, and 42.5% chronic absenteeism from the 2021-22 Civil Rights Data Collection. Demographically, the student body averages 83.9% White, 4.9% Hispanic or Latino, 0.6% African American across the district's schools.
Its largest campus is O D Speer School, enrolling 337 students (79% of the district's total enrollment). Its smallest is E F Duvall 7-8, at 88 students, a 4x enrollment spread across the district's campuses.
O D Speer School accounts for 79.1% of all Deer Lodge Elem student enrollment
That is an overwhelming concentration, leaving the rest of Deer Lodge Elem a distant remainder — means Deer Lodge 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 Lodge Elem student-counselor ratio is 213:1 — 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.
Deer Lodge Elem chronic absenteeism rate is 42.5% — 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.