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.
Desert Center, California - 1 schools
At $63,357 per pupil, Desert Center Unified ranks #11 of 1862 California districts by per-pupil spending (California districts). NCES F-33 finance data.
26
Total Enrollment
1
Schools
$63,357
Per-Pupil Spending
Elementary
School Types
District-Level NCES Analysis
Desert Center Unified operates 1 public schools serving 26 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 Riverside County.
Per-pupil expenditure runs $63,357 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 77.6% local, 13.9% state, and 8.5% 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 58.6% chronic absenteeism from the 2021-22 Civil Rights Data Collection. Demographically, the student body averages 44.8% White, 44.8% Hispanic or Latino, 3.4% Asian across the district's schools.
Its largest campus is Eagle Mountain Elementary, enrolling 29 students (100% of the district's total enrollment).
Eagle Mountain Elementary accounts for 100.0% of all Desert Center Unified student enrollment
That is an overwhelming concentration, leaving the rest of Desert Center Unified a distant remainder — means Desert Center 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.
Desert Center Unified has higher-than-average Title I eligibility — 68.0% 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). Eligibility here is approaching the 75% concentration-grant threshold; it does not yet unlock the extra funding tier but sits meaningfully above the baseline 50% majority mark. 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.
Desert Center Unified chronic absenteeism rate is 58.6% — 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.