Every figure on PlainSchools is rendered directly from the source NCES, CRDC and F-33 federal
records, no number is typed in by an editor. District totals are aggregated directly from the schools reporting under this district in the source records. See our
editorial standards & corrections policy, the
methodology behind these numbers, or
report a data error. Data current as of June 2026.
Mendon, Missouri - 2 schools
At $15,740 per pupil, Northwestern R-I ranks #83 of 549 Missouri districts by per-pupil spending (Missouri districts). NCES F-33 finance data.
168
Total Enrollment
2
Schools
$15,740
Per-Pupil Spending
Combined
School Types
District-Level NCES Analysis
Northwestern R-I operates 2 public schools serving 168 students, placing it among the smallest districts in Missouri. 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 Chariton County.
Per-pupil expenditure runs $15,740 according to the NCES F-33 School District Finance Survey, in the upper half of 549 Missouri districts by per-pupil spending. See how Missouri compares in our national per-pupil spending analysis. The funding mix is 62.6% local, 21.4% state, and 16.0% federal, a local-revenue-heavy mix that leaves the district more exposed to property-tax swings and local ballot measures than state-funded peers.
a 403.1:1 student-counselor ratio, well above the ASCA benchmark though still under the roughly 408:1 national average, and 9.3% chronic absenteeism from the 2021-22 Civil Rights Data Collection. Demographically, the student body averages 99.0% White, 0.9% African American across the district's schools.
Its largest campus is Northwestern Elem., enrolling 82 students (60% of the district's total enrollment).
Northwestern Elem. accounts for 48.8% of all Northwestern R-I student enrollment
That is an overwhelming concentration, leaving the rest of Northwestern R-I a distant remainder — means Northwestern R-I-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.
Northwestern R-I student-counselor ratio is 403:1 — high (typically associated with staffing constraints that limit per-student counselor time; CRDC data shows higher ratios cluster in larger urban systems)
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 Higher values may reflect larger urban scale or recent resource constraints that have widened the gap.
Northwestern R-I chronic absenteeism rate is 9.3% — 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.