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Austin, Minnesota - 13 schools
151
Total Enrollment
13
Schools
-
Per-Pupil Spending
Combined, High
School Types
District-Level NCES Analysis
Southern Mn Education Consortium operates 13 public schools serving 151 students, placing it among the smaller districts in Minnesota. The school portfolio breaks down into 12 combined, 1 high 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 Mower County.
The funding mix is 33.9% local, 56.3% state, and 9.7% federal, a state-revenue-heavy mix that insulates the district somewhat from local property-tax volatility, though it ties funding to state budget cycles.
and 34.5% chronic absenteeism from the 2021-22 Civil Rights Data Collection. Demographically, the student body averages 81.3% White, 11.3% Hispanic or Latino, 4.4% African American across the district's schools. Its most demographically mixed campus is Reset, with a diversity index of 54.6/100.
Its largest campus is Smec Alc, enrolling 70 students (40% of the district's total enrollment). Its smallest is Smec Credit Recovery, at 1 students, a 70x enrollment spread across the district's campuses.
Smec Alc accounts for 39.8% of all Southern Mn Education Consortium student enrollment
That dominant concentration means Southern Mn Education Consortium-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.
Southern Mn Education Consortium school enrollment varies 70× across entities
Southern Mn Education Consortium school enrollment ranges from 1 students (lowest) to 70 students (highest), a spread of 69 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 Mn Education Consortium has higher-than-average Title I eligibility — 57.9% 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.
Southern Mn Education Consortium chronic absenteeism rate is 34.5% — high (typically associated with higher-than-average disruption; recent CRDC data showed elevated rates persisting after pandemic-era schooling changes)
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 Higher values may reflect larger urban scale or recent resource constraints that have widened the gap.
Comparisons are relative to Southern Mn Education Consortium's own figures; each column derives from NCES Common Core of Data and the F-33 Finance Survey.
Nearby Districts in Minnesota
Top districts in the same state, compare side-by-side for enrollment, spending, and demographics.