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Whitefish, Montana - 2 schools
At $12,677 per pupil, Olney-Bissell Elem ranks #291 of 394 Montana districts by per-pupil spending (Montana districts). NCES F-33 finance data.
105
Total Enrollment
2
Schools
$12,677
Per-Pupil Spending
Combined, Middle
School Types
District-Level NCES Analysis
Olney-Bissell Elem operates 2 public schools serving 105 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 Flathead County.
Per-pupil expenditure runs $12,677 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 38.8% local, 41.3% state, and 19.9% federal, a balanced mix across local, state, and federal sources, spreading budget risk across funding cycles rather than concentrating it in one.
a 17:1 student-counselor ratio, that meets the ASCA-recommended benchmark, and 35.0% chronic absenteeism from the 2021-22 Civil Rights Data Collection. Demographically, the student body averages 92.5% White, 1.3% Hispanic or Latino across the district's schools.
Its largest campus is Bissell School, enrolling 78 students (82% of the district's total enrollment). Its smallest is Bissell 7-8, at 17 students, a 5x enrollment spread across the district's campuses.
Bissell School accounts for 74.3% of all Olney-Bissell Elem student enrollment
That is an overwhelming concentration, leaving the rest of Olney-Bissell Elem a distant remainder — means Olney-Bissell 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.
Olney-Bissell Elem student-counselor ratio is 17:1 — 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.
Olney-Bissell Elem chronic absenteeism rate is 35.0% — 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.