At $33,455 per pupil, Elk Mountain School District 16-2 ranks #1 of 149 South Dakota districts by per-pupil spending (South Dakota districts). NCES F-33 finance data.
11
Total Enrollment
2
Schools
$33,455
Per-Pupil Spending
Combined, High
School Types
District-Level NCES Analysis
Elk Mountain School District 16-2 operates 2 public schools serving 11 students, placing it among the smallest districts in South Dakota. The school portfolio breaks down into 1 combined, 1 high 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 Custer County.
Per-pupil expenditure runs $33,455 according to the NCES F-33 School District Finance Survey, among the top 15 of 149 South Dakota districts by per-pupil spending. See how South Dakota compares in our national per-pupil spending analysis. The funding mix is 67.9% local, 0.7% state, and 31.4% 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 7.1% chronic absenteeism from the 2021-22 Civil Rights Data Collection. Demographically, the student body averages 100.0% White across the district's schools.
Its largest campus is Elk Mountain Elementary - 01, enrolling 14 students (88% of the district's total enrollment). Its smallest is Elk Mountain High School - 04, at 2 students, a 7x enrollment spread across the district's campuses.
Elk Mountain Elementary - 01 accounts for 87.5% of all Elk Mountain School District 16-2 student enrollment
That is an overwhelming concentration, leaving the rest of Elk Mountain School District 16-2 a distant remainder — means Elk Mountain School District 16-2-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.
Elk Mountain School District 16-2 chronic absenteeism rate is 7.1% — 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.
Comparisons are relative to Elk Mountain School District 16-2's own figures; each column derives from NCES Common Core of Data and the F-33 Finance Survey.
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