At $10,469 per pupil, Melville Elem ranks #365 of 393 Montana districts by per-pupil spending (Montana districts). NCES F-33 finance data.
32
Total Enrollment
1
Schools
$10,469
Per-Pupil Spending
Combined
School Types
District-Level NCES Analysis
Melville Elem operates 1 public schools serving 32 students, placing it among the smallest districts in Montana. The school portfolio breaks down into 1 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 Sweet Grass County.
Per-pupil expenditure runs $10,469 according to the NCES F-33 School District Finance Survey, among the bottom 40 of 393 Montana districts by per-pupil spending. See how Montana compares in our national per-pupil spending analysis. The funding mix is 34.1% local, 43.0% state, and 23.0% federal, a balanced mix across local, state, and federal sources, spreading budget risk across funding cycles rather than concentrating it in one.
a 18.2:1 student-counselor ratio, that meets the ASCA-recommended benchmark, and 40.0% 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 Melville School, enrolling 20 students (100% of the district's total enrollment).
Melville School accounts for 62.5% of all Melville Elem student enrollment
That is an overwhelming concentration, leaving the rest of Melville Elem a distant remainder — means Melville Elem-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.
Melville Elem student-counselor ratio is 18:1 — 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.
Melville Elem chronic absenteeism rate is 40.0% — high (typically associated with higher-than-average disruption; recent CRDC data showed elevated rates persisting after pandemic-era schooling changes)
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 Higher values may reflect larger urban scale or recent resource constraints that have widened the gap.