At $18,714 per pupil, Vanderbilt Area Schools ranks #77 of 812 Michigan districts by per-pupil spending (Michigan districts). NCES F-33 finance data.
98
Total Enrollment
1
Schools
$18,714
Per-Pupil Spending
Combined
School Types
District-Level NCES Analysis
Vanderbilt Area Schools operates 1 public schools serving 98 students, placing it among the smallest districts in Michigan. The school portfolio breaks down into 1 combined 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 Otsego County.
Per-pupil expenditure runs $18,714 according to the NCES F-33 School District Finance Survey, among the top 82 of 812 Michigan districts by per-pupil spending. See how Michigan compares in our national per-pupil spending analysis. The funding mix is 62.0% local, 9.3% state, and 28.7% 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 54.2% chronic absenteeism from the 2021-22 Civil Rights Data Collection. Demographically, the student body averages 98.6% White across the district's schools.
Its largest campus is Vanderbilt Area School, enrolling 72 students (100% of the district's total enrollment).
Enrollment across the district's NCES-reporting campuses grew 14.3% between 2022-23 and 2023-24 (98 to 112 students), while the student-teacher ratio widened by 10.0 students per teacher, per the NCES Common Core of Data annual universe files.
Of the district's $1,849,000 in reported FY2023 expenditures, 51.4% went to instruction, 42.5% to support services, and 0.5% to capital outlay, support-services-heavy relative to typical districts, reflecting spending on transportation, administration, or student services. Figures come from the NCES F-33 School District Finance Survey's function-level breakdown, not the aggregate per-pupil figure above.
Vanderbilt Area School accounts for 73.5% of all Vanderbilt Area Schools student enrollment
That is an overwhelming concentration, leaving the rest of Vanderbilt Area Schools a distant remainder — means Vanderbilt Area Schools-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.
Vanderbilt Area Schools reports 81.6% free-lunch eligibility
The reported share is at least 75%, indicating a high concentration of measured economic need. Title I operates under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA, 2015), but its statutory allocation uses additional LEA-level counts and rules not represented by this average. This percentage is an economic-need context measure; it does not establish a Title I award, show dollars received, or describe how funds are distributed among campuses.
Vanderbilt Area Schools chronic absenteeism rate is 54.2% — 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.