Willow Lake School District 12-3

What the Numbers Say About Willow Lake School District 12-3

Willow Lake School District 12-3 is a small school district in South Dakota, serving 307 students at an estimated per-pupil spending of $11,726. Estimated average teacher salary — derived from instructional expenditure variable Z33 divided by teacher FTE — is $67,573, placing the district in the lower-spending tier of NCES F-33 respondents. NCES LEAID 4679350 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 Willow Lake School District 12-3 runs slightly below the state benchmark — a 0.6% gap, and below the national instructional-salary estimate of $82,292 (17.9% differential). Among enrolling districts in South Dakota, it pays more than 41% 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, Willow Lake School District 12-3 reports $3.6M in total expenditure against $3.8M in revenue, with instructional salaries accounting for 38% of spending — a compensation-to-budget ratio that signals how much of each tax dollar reaches classroom educators. Regular-program teacher salary outlay is $0.9M, special-education teacher pay is $0.1M. 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.