At $40,757 per pupil, Union Sd 81 ranks #4 of 845 Illinois districts by per-pupil spending (Illinois districts). NCES F-33 finance data.
115
Total Enrollment
1
Schools
$40,757
Per-Pupil Spending
Elementary
School Types
District-Level NCES Analysis
Union Sd 81 operates 1 public schools serving 115 students, placing it among the smallest districts in Illinois. The school portfolio breaks down into 1 elementary 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 Will County.
Per-pupil expenditure runs $40,757 according to the NCES F-33 School District Finance Survey, among the top 85 of 845 Illinois districts by per-pupil spending. See how Illinois compares in our national per-pupil spending analysis. The funding mix is 83.4% local, 10.4% state, and 6.2% federal, a local-revenue-heavy mix that leaves the district more exposed to property-tax swings and local ballot measures than state-funded peers.
and 7.0% chronic absenteeism from the 2021-22 Civil Rights Data Collection. Demographically, the student body averages 46.2% Hispanic or Latino, 35.7% White, 9.1% African American across the district's schools.
Its largest campus is Union Elementary School, enrolling 143 students (100% of the district's total enrollment).
Enrollment across the district's NCES-reporting campuses grew 11.3% between 2022-23 and 2023-24 (115 to 128 students), while the student-teacher ratio widened by 1.2 students per teacher, per the NCES Common Core of Data annual universe files.
Of the district's $5,949,000 in reported FY2023 expenditures, 31.9% went to instruction, 28.1% to support services, and 4.8% to capital outlay, a fairly typical instruction/support/capital split for a public school district. Figures come from the NCES F-33 School District Finance Survey's function-level breakdown, not the aggregate per-pupil figure above.
Union Elementary School accounts for 100.0% of all Union Sd 81 student enrollment
That is an overwhelming concentration, leaving the rest of Union Sd 81 a distant remainder — means Union Sd 81-wide averages can mask substantial variation outside the largest entity. Grade band: elementary. 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.
Union Sd 81 chronic absenteeism rate is 7.0% — well below typical (typically associated with unusually small scale or exceptionally high per-unit investment)
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 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.