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Billings, Montana - 2 schools
At $81,532 per pupil, Yellowstone Academy Elem ranks #4 of 394 Montana districts by per-pupil spending (Montana districts). NCES F-33 finance data.
58
Total Enrollment
2
Schools
$81,532
Per-Pupil Spending
Combined, Middle
School Types
District-Level NCES Analysis
Yellowstone Academy Elem operates 2 public schools serving 58 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 Yellowstone County.
Per-pupil expenditure runs $81,532 according to the NCES F-33 School District Finance Survey, among the top 40 of 394 Montana districts by per-pupil spending. See how Montana compares in our national per-pupil spending analysis. The funding mix is 60.0% local, 25.1% state, and 14.9% federal, a local-revenue-heavy mix that leaves the district more exposed to property-tax swings and local ballot measures than state-funded peers.
a 26:1 student-counselor ratio, that meets the ASCA-recommended benchmark, and 53.5% chronic absenteeism from the 2021-22 Civil Rights Data Collection. Demographically, the student body averages 76.4% White, 2.8% Hispanic or Latino across the district's schools.
Its largest campus is Yellowstone Academy Elem, enrolling 36 students (69% of the district's total enrollment).
Yellowstone Academy Elem accounts for 62.1% of all Yellowstone Academy Elem student enrollment
That is an overwhelming concentration, leaving the rest of Yellowstone Academy Elem a distant remainder — means Yellowstone Academy 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.
Yellowstone Academy Elem student-counselor ratio is 26:1 — well below typical (typically associated with unusually small scale or exceptionally high per-unit investment)
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 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.
Yellowstone Academy Elem chronic absenteeism rate is 53.5% — 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.