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Thompson Falls, Montana - 2 schools
An equity score of 50/100 ranks Thompson Falls Elem #35 of 141 districts in Montana (state average 38). Derived live from how evenly resources are distributed across the district's schools.
At $14,776 per pupil, Thompson Falls Elem ranks #225 of 394 Montana districts by per-pupil spending (Montana districts). NCES F-33 finance data.
320
Total Enrollment
2
Schools
$14,776
Per-Pupil Spending
Combined, Middle
School Types
District-Level NCES Analysis
Thompson Falls Elem operates 2 public schools serving 320 students, placing it among the smallest districts in Montana. The school portfolio breaks down into 1 combined, 1 middle 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 Sanders County.
Per-pupil expenditure runs $14,776 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 43.4% local, 36.9% state, and 19.7% 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 50/100, ranked #35 of 141 in Montana against a state average of 38, notably more even than the typical district in the state for how evenly funding reaches its schools.
a 402.6:1 student-counselor ratio, well above the ASCA benchmark though still under the roughly 408:1 national average, and 43.3% chronic absenteeism from the 2021-22 Civil Rights Data Collection. Demographically, the student body averages 89.7% White, 4.6% Hispanic or Latino across the district's schools.
Its largest campus is Thompson Falls Elem Schl, enrolling 240 students (78% of the district's total enrollment). Its smallest is Thompson Falls 7-8, at 68 students, a 4x enrollment spread across the district's campuses.
Thompson Falls Elem Schl accounts for 75.0% of all Thompson Falls Elem student enrollment
That is an overwhelming concentration, leaving the rest of Thompson Falls Elem a distant remainder — means Thompson Falls 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.
Thompson Falls Elem student-counselor ratio is 403:1 — 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.
Thompson Falls Elem chronic absenteeism rate is 43.3% — 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.