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Sawyer, North Dakota - 2 schools
At $31,789 per pupil, Sawyer 16 ranks #6 of 168 North Dakota districts by per-pupil spending (North Dakota districts). NCES F-33 finance data.
74
Total Enrollment
2
Schools
$31,789
Per-Pupil Spending
Combined, High
School Types
District-Level NCES Analysis
Sawyer 16 operates 2 public schools serving 74 students, placing it among the smallest districts in North Dakota. The school portfolio breaks down into 1 combined, 1 high 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 Ward County.
Per-pupil expenditure runs $31,789 according to the NCES F-33 School District Finance Survey, among the top 17 of 168 North Dakota districts by per-pupil spending. See how North Dakota compares in our national per-pupil spending analysis. The funding mix is 37.8% local, 53.0% state, and 9.2% federal, a state-revenue-heavy mix that insulates the district somewhat from local property-tax volatility, though it ties funding to state budget cycles.
a 47:1 student-counselor ratio, that meets the ASCA-recommended benchmark, and 15.7% chronic absenteeism from the 2021-22 Civil Rights Data Collection. Demographically, the student body averages 86.4% White, 7.7% Hispanic or Latino across the district's schools.
Its largest campus is Sawyer Elementary School, enrolling 74 students (79% of the district's total enrollment). Its smallest is Sawyer High School, at 20 students, a 4x enrollment spread across the district's campuses.
Sawyer Elementary School accounts for 78.7% of all Sawyer 16 student enrollment
That is an overwhelming concentration, leaving the rest of Sawyer 16 a distant remainder — means Sawyer 16-wide averages can mask substantial variation outside the largest entity. Grade band: combined. The share measures enrollment concentration only; it does not establish how the district allocates programs, capital, or staff. Because it contains a majority of the affected population, enrollment-weighted aggregates will sit closer to this entity's reported fields than to those of smaller peers; an unweighted entity count answers a different question.
Sawyer 16 student-counselor ratio is 47:1 — 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.
Sawyer 16 chronic absenteeism rate is 15.7% — near the typical range (US average ~28) — aligned with the national post-pandemic baseline of roughly 28% chronic absenteeism
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 Variation between sub-units within Sawyer 16 is typically wider than the Sawyer 16-aggregate figure suggests.