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Quemado, New Mexico - 3 schools
At $26,401 per pupil, Quemado Independent Schools ranks #13 of 141 New Mexico districts by per-pupil spending (New Mexico districts). NCES F-33 finance data.
168
Total Enrollment
3
Schools
$26,401
Per-Pupil Spending
Combined, Elementary
School Types
District-Level NCES Analysis
Quemado Independent Schools operates 3 public schools serving 168 students, placing it among the smallest districts in New Mexico. The school portfolio breaks down into 2 combined, 1 elementary 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 Catron County.
Per-pupil expenditure runs $26,401 according to the NCES F-33 School District Finance Survey, among the top 15 of 141 New Mexico districts by per-pupil spending. See how New Mexico compares in our national per-pupil spending analysis. The funding mix is 11.4% local, 61.8% state, and 26.8% federal, a state-revenue-heavy mix that insulates the district somewhat from local property-tax volatility, though it ties funding to state budget cycles.
and 52.8% chronic absenteeism from the 2021-22 Civil Rights Data Collection. Demographically, the student body averages 64.0% White, 26.7% Hispanic or Latino, 0.5% African American across the district's schools. Its most demographically mixed campus is Quemado Elementary, with a diversity index of 58.0/100.
Its largest campus is Quemado High, enrolling 81 students (48% of the district's total enrollment). Its smallest is Datil Elementary, at 16 students, a 5x enrollment spread across the district's campuses.
Quemado High accounts for 47.6% of all Quemado Independent Schools student enrollment
That is an overwhelming concentration, leaving the rest of Quemado Independent Schools a distant remainder — means Quemado Independent Schools-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.
Quemado Independent Schools school enrollment varies 5.1× across entities
Quemado Independent Schools school enrollment ranges from 16 students (lowest) to 81 students (highest), a spread of 65 students. That relatively narrow ratio reflects an unusually homogeneous campus portfolio, most districts have a wider mix of school sizes. Per-school staffing ratios, programme availability, and capital-renovation cycles often diverge inside the same district based on enrollment shape.
Quemado Independent Schools has higher-than-average Title I eligibility — 52.5% 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.
Quemado Independent Schools chronic absenteeism rate is 52.8% — well above typical (typically associated with unusually large scale or acute resource constraints)
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 above typical often signal acute resource constraints or a structurally different scale than most peers — worth reading alongside the underlying counts, not the ratio alone.