Rapid City Area School District 51-4

What the Numbers Say About Rapid City Area School District 51-4

Rapid City Area School District 51-4 is a mid-sized school district in South Dakota, serving 12,847 students at an estimated per-pupil spending of $11,988. Estimated average teacher salary — derived from instructional expenditure variable Z33 divided by teacher FTE — is $65,311, placing the district in the lower-spending tier of NCES F-33 respondents. NCES LEAID 4659820 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 Rapid City Area School District 51-4 runs slightly below the state benchmark — a 3.9% gap, and below the national instructional-salary estimate of $82,292 (20.6% differential). Among enrolling districts in South Dakota, it pays more than 33% 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, Rapid City Area School District 51-4 reports $154.0M in total expenditure against $166.3M in revenue, with instructional salaries accounting for 36% of spending — a compensation-to-budget ratio that signals how much of each tax dollar reaches classroom educators. Regular-program teacher salary outlay is $36.5M, special-education teacher pay is $4.3M. 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.