Basic Information

Grant Information

At the beginning of the 2025–2026 school year, our campus is blessed and bustling with energy! We have nearly 30 new families and are still actively scheduling tours with prospective families. We believe a St. James education continues to be in such high demand because our scholars are nurtured in their academic curiosity, spiritual formation, moral development, and outreach to the community.

Because of the generous support of your foundation and others in the Coastal Bend, 61% of our student body is actively benefitting from tuition aid scholarships and discounts to attend St. James Episcopal School. On behalf of those 180 scholars and their families: thank you! Your grant is enabling St. James to provide a robust academic curriculum and transformative educational experiences to students from diverse walks of life.

Each year, SJES’s Board of Trustees and its Finance Committee assess the financial strength of the school in conjunction with the needs of the specific application pool to determine the level of aid we can provide our community.

Currently all scholarships are paid through grants received, a percentage of funds raised through the Annual Giving Campaign, and our operating budget. We seek grants from local foundations and organizations that are supportive of the role private, Christian education plays in our region. In addition, a percentage of the funds raised through our Annual Giving Campaign is directed toward these scholarships. We are very proud that we have had 100% financial participation from our Board members, faculty, staff, and families to this campaign for eight years in a row. The balance for the program is paid through our operating budget. Through various development efforts, we strive to increase the amount of grants and other charitable donations we receive so that St. James can direct more conventional tuition income toward academic programming needs.

Next year, the State of Texas’s SB 2 (commonly referred to as School Choice Vouchers) will allow families to use public funding in Education Savings Accounts for eligible expenses like private school tuition. We are excited about the new voucher program’s promise to help more children access a private education, and we expect several families—of both existing and prospective St. James scholars—to enter the program’s lottery system. But it will function as a lottery: not everyone who is deemed eligible to receive the state funds will “win” the opportunity to participate in the program. We don’t want families to have to gamble when it comes to affording their kids’ education, and we are grateful for the foundation’s grant support that helps guarantee affordability to so many. Along with hundreds of other private schools in Texas, we will be learning more about the logistics and limitations of SB2 this fall and spring, and SJES will adjust its Tuition Aid Scholarship and Discount programs as needed to ensure broad reach into our community.