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Miranda, California - 8 schools
An equity score of 64/100 ranks Southern Humboldt Joint Unified #407 of 1517 districts in California (state average 50). Derived live from how evenly resources are distributed across the district's schools.
At $16,608 per pupil, Southern Humboldt Joint Unified ranks #613 of 1862 California districts by per-pupil spending (California districts). NCES F-33 finance data.
708
Total Enrollment
8
Schools
$16,608
Per-Pupil Spending
Elementary, High
School Types
District-Level NCES Analysis
Southern Humboldt Joint Unified operates 8 public schools serving 708 students, placing it among the smaller districts in California. The school portfolio breaks down into 3 elementary, 3 high, 1 middle, 1 combined schools, a compact enough portfolio that families can compare every campus directly before they move, rent, or enrol. These enrollment and school figures come from the NCES Common Core of Data (CCD) 2024-25 release, and the district is based in Humboldt County.
Per-pupil expenditure runs $16,608 according to the NCES F-33 School District Finance Survey, in the upper half of 1862 California districts by per-pupil spending. See how California compares in our national per-pupil spending analysis. The funding mix is 44.3% local, 43.7% state, and 12.0% federal, a balanced mix across local, state, and federal sources, spreading budget risk across funding cycles rather than concentrating it in one. The district's equity score is 64/100, ranked #407 of 1517 in California against a state average of 50, notably more even than the typical district in the state for how evenly funding reaches its schools.
Academic infrastructure includes 1 of 8 schools offering Advanced Placement (1 AP courses district-wide), a 374.4:1 student-counselor ratio, well above the ASCA benchmark though still under the roughly 408:1 national average, and 49.6% chronic absenteeism from the 2021-22 Civil Rights Data Collection. Demographically, the student body averages 55.6% White, 22.9% Hispanic or Latino, 0.3% Asian across the district's schools. Its most demographically mixed campus is Casterlin Elementary, with a diversity index of 66.2/100.
Its largest campus is Redway Elementary, enrolling 272 students (42% of the district's total enrollment). Its smallest is Casterlin High, at 4 students, a 68x enrollment spread across the district's campuses.
Redway Elementary accounts for 38.4% of all Southern Humboldt Joint Unified student enrollment
That dominant concentration means Southern Humboldt Joint Unified-wide averages can mask substantial variation outside the dominant entity. Grade band: elementary. 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.
Southern Humboldt Joint Unified school enrollment varies 68× across entities
Southern Humboldt Joint Unified school enrollment ranges from 4 students (lowest) to 272 students (highest), a spread of 268 students. That ratio is an extreme outlier spread — among the widest gaps observed anywhere in this dataset. Per-school staffing ratios, programme availability, and capital-renovation cycles often diverge inside the same district based on enrollment shape.
Southern Humboldt Joint Unified has higher-than-average Title I eligibility — 63.1% 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). Eligibility here is approaching the 75% concentration-grant threshold; it does not yet unlock the extra funding tier but sits meaningfully above the baseline 50% majority mark. 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.
Southern Humboldt Joint Unified student-counselor ratio is 374:1 — 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.
Southern Humboldt Joint Unified chronic absenteeism rate is 49.6% — 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.
Comparisons are relative to Southern Humboldt Joint Unified's own figures; each column derives from NCES Common Core of Data and the F-33 Finance Survey.
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