At $40,410 per pupil, Vista Del Mar Union ranks #32 of 1880 California districts by per-pupil spending (California districts). NCES F-33 finance data.
39
Total Enrollment
1
Schools
$40,410
Per-Pupil Spending
Elementary
School Types
District-Level NCES Analysis
Vista Del Mar Union operates 1 public schools serving 39 students, placing it among the smallest districts in California. 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 Santa Barbara County.
Per-pupil expenditure runs $40,410 according to the NCES F-33 School District Finance Survey, among the top 188 of 1880 California districts by per-pupil spending. See how California compares in our national per-pupil spending analysis. The funding mix is 52.1% local, 27.8% state, and 20.1% 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 3.1% chronic absenteeism from the 2021-22 Civil Rights Data Collection. Demographically, the student body averages 53.8% White, 33.8% Hispanic or Latino across the district's schools.
Its largest campus is Vista De Las Cruces, enrolling 65 students (100% of the district's total enrollment).
Enrollment across the district's NCES-reporting campuses grew 56.4% between 2022-23 and 2023-24 (39 to 61 students), while the student-teacher ratio widened by 5.7 students per teacher, per the NCES Common Core of Data annual universe files.
Of the district's $1,697,000 in reported FY2023 expenditures, 43.4% went to instruction, 44.7% to support services, and 2.9% 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.
Vista De Las Cruces accounts for 100.0% of all Vista Del Mar Union student enrollment
That is an overwhelming concentration, leaving the rest of Vista Del Mar Union a distant remainder — means Vista Del Mar Union-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.
Vista Del Mar Union chronic absenteeism rate is 3.1% — 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.