At $23,504 per pupil, Lake Benton Public School District ranks #28 of 509 Minnesota districts by per-pupil spending (Minnesota districts). NCES F-33 finance data.
117
Total Enrollment
2
Schools
$23,504
Per-Pupil Spending
Combined
School Types
District-Level NCES Analysis
Lake Benton Public School District operates 2 public schools serving 117 students, placing it among the smallest districts in Minnesota. The school portfolio breaks down into 2 combined 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 Lincoln County.
Per-pupil expenditure runs $23,504 according to the NCES F-33 School District Finance Survey, among the top 51 of 509 Minnesota districts by per-pupil spending. See how Minnesota compares in our national per-pupil spending analysis. The funding mix is 26.2% local, 60.6% state, and 13.2% federal, a state-revenue-heavy mix that insulates the district somewhat from local property-tax volatility, though it ties funding to state budget cycles.
a 100:1 student-counselor ratio, that meets the ASCA-recommended benchmark, and 5.0% chronic absenteeism from the 2021-22 Civil Rights Data Collection. Demographically, the student body averages 96.5% White, 3.5% Hispanic or Latino across the district's schools.
Its largest campus is Lake Benton Elementary, enrolling 100 students (98% of the district's total enrollment). Its smallest is Lake Benton Secondary, at 2 students, a 50x enrollment spread across the district's campuses.
Enrollment across the district's NCES-reporting campuses fell 3.4% between 2022-23 and 2023-24 (117 to 113 students), and the student-teacher ratio held roughly steady, per the NCES Common Core of Data annual universe files.
Of the district's $3,071,000 in reported FY2023 expenditures, 52.7% went to instruction, 32.3% to support services, and 2.4% to capital outlay, a fairly typical instruction/support/capital split for a public school district. Figures come from the NCES F-33 School District Finance Survey's function-level breakdown, not the aggregate per-pupil figure above.
Lake Benton Elementary accounts for 85.5% of all Lake Benton Public School District student enrollment
That is an overwhelming concentration, leaving the rest of Lake Benton Public School District a distant remainder — means Lake Benton Public School District-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.
Lake Benton Public School District student-counselor ratio is 100:1 — well below typical (typically associated with unusually small scale or exceptionally high per-unit investment)
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 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.
Lake Benton Public School District chronic absenteeism rate is 5.0% — 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 Lake Benton Public School District's own figures; each column derives from NCES Common Core of Data and the F-33 Finance Survey.
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