Bennett County School District 03-1

What the Numbers Say About Bennett County School District 03-1

Bennett County School District 03-1 is a small school district in South Dakota, serving 521 students at an estimated per-pupil spending of $23,088. Estimated average teacher salary — derived from instructional expenditure variable Z33 divided by teacher FTE — is $80,269, placing the district in the high-investment tier of NCES F-33 respondents. NCES LEAID 4606240 references the FY2022 Common Core of Data Local Education Agency Finance Survey.

Relative to the South Dakota statewide average of $67,949, teacher pay in Bennett County School District 03-1 runs meaningfully above the state benchmark — a 18.1% gap, and near the national instructional-salary estimate of $82,292 (2.5% differential). Among enrolling districts in South Dakota, it pays more than 76% of them. Licensing reciprocity, collective bargaining strength, and state aid formulas all contribute to where a district lands in these tiers.

On the budget side, Bennett County School District 03-1 reports $12.0M in total expenditure against $12.4M in revenue, with instructional salaries accounting for 23% of spending — a compensation-to-budget ratio that signals how much of each tax dollar reaches classroom educators. Regular-program teacher salary outlay is $1.7M, special-education teacher pay is $0.2M. These figures are district-level aggregates from F-33, not individual contracts — step-and-column schedules, stipends, and collectively-bargained differentials sit underneath these totals.