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Sidney, Montana - 1 schools
At $13,639 per pupil, Rau Elem ranks #259 of 394 Montana districts by per-pupil spending (Montana districts). NCES F-33 finance data.
69
Total Enrollment
1
Schools
$13,639
Per-Pupil Spending
Combined
School Types
District-Level NCES Analysis
Rau Elem operates 1 public schools serving 69 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 Richland County.
Per-pupil expenditure runs $13,639 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 41.7% local, 45.8% state, and 12.4% federal, a balanced mix across local, state, and federal sources, spreading budget risk across funding cycles rather than concentrating it in one.
and 10.0% chronic absenteeism from the 2021-22 Civil Rights Data Collection. Demographically, the student body averages 90.0% White, 7.1% Hispanic or Latino across the district's schools.
Its largest campus is Rau School, enrolling 70 students (100% of the district's total enrollment).
Rau School accounts for 100.0% of all Rau Elem student enrollment
That is an overwhelming concentration, leaving the rest of Rau Elem a distant remainder — means Rau 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.
Rau Elem chronic absenteeism rate is 10.0% — low (typically associated with lower-than-average attendance disruption; districts in this range often have attendance interventions, robust transportation, or smaller catchments that reduce barriers)
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 Lower values often correlate with smaller scale and population characteristics rather than higher resource budgets per se.