Custer School District 16-1

What the Numbers Say About Custer School District 16-1

Custer School District 16-1 is a small school district in South Dakota, serving 922 students at an estimated per-pupil spending of $20,373. Estimated average teacher salary — derived from instructional expenditure variable Z33 divided by teacher FTE — is $75,146, placing the district in the high-investment tier of NCES F-33 respondents. NCES LEAID 4616950 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 Custer School District 16-1 runs meaningfully above the state benchmark — a 10.6% gap, and below the national instructional-salary estimate of $82,292 (8.7% differential). Among enrolling districts in South Dakota, it pays more than 67% 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, Custer School District 16-1 reports $18.8M in total expenditure against $16.2M in revenue, with instructional salaries accounting for 25% of spending — a compensation-to-budget ratio that signals how much of each tax dollar reaches classroom educators. Regular-program teacher salary outlay is $2.5M, special-education teacher pay is $0.5M. 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.