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Penelope, Texas - 1 schools
An equity score of 73/100 ranks Penelope Isd #142 of 1044 districts in Texas (state average 50). Derived live from how evenly resources are distributed across the district's schools.
At $13,653 per pupil, Penelope Isd ranks #466 of 1202 Texas districts by per-pupil spending (Texas districts). NCES F-33 finance data.
202
Total Enrollment
1
Schools
$13,653
Per-Pupil Spending
Combined
School Types
District-Level NCES Analysis
Penelope Isd operates 1 public schools serving 202 students, placing it among the smallest districts in Texas. 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 Hill County.
Per-pupil expenditure runs $13,653 according to the NCES F-33 School District Finance Survey, in the upper half of 1202 Texas districts by per-pupil spending. See how Texas compares in our national per-pupil spending analysis. The funding mix is 16.2% local, 72.1% state, and 11.7% federal, a state-revenue-heavy mix that insulates the district somewhat from local property-tax volatility, though it ties funding to state budget cycles. The district's equity score is 73/100, ranked #142 of 1044 in Texas against a state average of 50, notably more even than the typical district in the state for how evenly funding reaches its schools.
a 432:1 student-counselor ratio, above both the ASCA benchmark and the roughly 408:1 national average, and 7.9% chronic absenteeism from the 2021-22 Civil Rights Data Collection. Demographically, the student body averages 59.3% White, 36.1% Hispanic or Latino, 2.8% African American across the district's schools.
Its largest campus is Penelope School, enrolling 216 students (100% of the district's total enrollment).
Penelope School accounts for 100.0% of all Penelope Isd student enrollment
That is an overwhelming concentration, leaving the rest of Penelope Isd a distant remainder — means Penelope Isd-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.
Penelope Isd has higher-than-average Title I eligibility — 50.5% of the population qualifies for free or reduced-price lunch
free or reduced-price lunch eligibility is the federal threshold for Title I funding allocations, established under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA, 2015). Areas above 75% eligibility receive concentration grants on top of the basic Title I formula. Regions with eligibility this high typically draw a substantially larger federal funding share relative to their local tax base, which can either offset or reinforce existing gaps depending on allocation policy.
Penelope Isd student-counselor ratio is 432:1 — 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.
Penelope Isd chronic absenteeism rate is 7.9% — 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.