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Petrolia, California - 3 schools
At $25,732 per pupil, Mattole Unified ranks #103 of 1862 California districts by per-pupil spending (California districts). NCES F-33 finance data.
34
Total Enrollment
3
Schools
$25,732
Per-Pupil Spending
Elementary, High
School Types
District-Level NCES Analysis
Mattole Unified operates 3 public schools serving 34 students, placing it among the smallest districts in California. The school portfolio breaks down into 2 elementary, 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 Humboldt County.
Per-pupil expenditure runs $25,732 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 54.7% local, 43.1% state, and 2.2% federal, a local-revenue-heavy mix that leaves the district more exposed to property-tax swings and local ballot measures than state-funded peers.
Academic infrastructure includes 1 of 3 schools offering Advanced Placement (1 AP courses district-wide), a 2:1 student-counselor ratio, that meets the ASCA-recommended benchmark, and 15.1% chronic absenteeism from the 2021-22 Civil Rights Data Collection. Demographically, the student body averages 46.8% White, 34.5% Hispanic or Latino across the district's schools. Its most demographically mixed campus is Honeydew Elementary, with a diversity index of 61.5/100.
Its largest campus is Mattole Elementary, enrolling 27 students (64% of the district's total enrollment). Its smallest is Mattole Triple Junction High, at 2 students, a 14x enrollment spread across the district's campuses.
Mattole Elementary accounts for 64.3% of all Mattole Unified student enrollment
That is an overwhelming concentration, leaving the rest of Mattole Unified a distant remainder — means Mattole 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.
Mattole Unified school enrollment varies 14× across entities
Mattole Unified school enrollment ranges from 2 students (lowest) to 27 students (highest), a spread of 25 students. That spread reflects typical mixed-portfolio variation between specialty programs and large neighbourhood schools. Per-school staffing ratios, programme availability, and capital-renovation cycles often diverge inside the same district based on enrollment shape.
Mattole Unified student-counselor ratio is 2:1 — 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.
Mattole Unified chronic absenteeism rate is 15.1% — near the typical range (US average ~28) — aligned with the national post-pandemic baseline of roughly 28% chronic absenteeism
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 Variation between sub-units within Mattole Unified is typically wider than the Mattole Unified-aggregate figure suggests.