Every figure on PlainSchools is rendered directly from the source NCES, CRDC and F-33 federal
records, no number is typed in by an editor. District totals are aggregated directly from the schools reporting under this district in the source records. See our
editorial standards & corrections policy, the
methodology behind these numbers, or
report a data error. Data current as of June 2026.
El Cajon, California - 1 schools
At $35,562 per pupil, Dehesa Elementary ranks #41 of 1862 California districts by per-pupil spending (California districts). NCES F-33 finance data.
84
Total Enrollment
1
Schools
$35,562
Per-Pupil Spending
Elementary
School Types
District-Level NCES Analysis
Dehesa Elementary operates 1 public schools serving 84 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 San Diego County.
Per-pupil expenditure runs $35,562 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 55.4% local, 33.9% state, and 10.6% federal, a local-revenue-heavy mix that leaves the district more exposed to property-tax swings and local ballot measures than state-funded peers.
and 7.3% chronic absenteeism from the 2021-22 Civil Rights Data Collection. Demographically, the student body averages 42.2% Hispanic or Latino, 31.2% White, 2.3% Asian across the district's schools.
Its largest campus is Dehesa Elementary, enrolling 399 students (100% of the district's total enrollment).
Dehesa Elementary accounts for 100.0% of all Dehesa Elementary student enrollment
That is an overwhelming concentration, leaving the rest of Dehesa Elementary a distant remainder — means Dehesa Elementary-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.
Dehesa Elementary chronic absenteeism rate is 7.3% — well below typical (typically associated with unusually small scale or exceptionally high per-unit investment)
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 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.