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Grass Range, Montana - 2 schools
At $13,338 per pupil, Grass Range Elem ranks #270 of 394 Montana districts by per-pupil spending (Montana districts). NCES F-33 finance data.
58
Total Enrollment
2
Schools
$13,338
Per-Pupil Spending
Combined, Middle
School Types
District-Level NCES Analysis
Grass Range Elem operates 2 public schools serving 58 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 Fergus County.
Per-pupil expenditure runs $13,338 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 29.9% local, 35.1% state, and 35.1% federal, a balanced mix across local, state, and federal sources, spreading budget risk across funding cycles rather than concentrating it in one.
a 178.2:1 student-counselor ratio, that meets the ASCA-recommended benchmark, and 6.7% chronic absenteeism from the 2021-22 Civil Rights Data Collection. Demographically, the student body averages 85.5% White, 6.7% Asian, 1.1% Hispanic or Latino across the district's schools.
Its largest campus is Grass Range School, enrolling 45 students (83% of the district's total enrollment). Its smallest is Grass Range 7-8, at 9 students, a 5x enrollment spread across the district's campuses.
Grass Range School accounts for 77.6% of all Grass Range Elem student enrollment
That is an overwhelming concentration, leaving the rest of Grass Range Elem a distant remainder — means Grass Range 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.
Grass Range Elem student-counselor ratio is 178:1 — 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.
Grass Range Elem chronic absenteeism rate is 6.7% — 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.