San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Tuitions for S.F. schools not at top
Marin County has higher average costs for private campuses
California private school tuitions have skyrocketed in recent years, with data showing costs increasing at a much greater rate than family income levels. But what does data show about how today’s tuition levels compare across the Bay Area — and school by school?
There is no authoritative public database of private school tuition rates across the Bay Area, so we made one.
The Chronicle collected the 2023-24 school year annual tuition for over 300 private schools in San Francisco, San Mateo, Marin, Contra Costa and Alameda counties to understand which schools are the most expensive, how they compare across the region and how schools within one county stack up against each other. We took the data from schools’ websites or obtained it from their admissions offices, and surveyed both religiously affiliated schools and non-religious schools across all grade levels starting with pre-K. We limited our data collection to schools that have been established for 10 years or more to set a consistent benchmark. Here’s what we found.
San Francisco has the highest private school enrollment rate in the Bay Area and one of the highest in the state, according to Private School Review, a website that gathers self-reported data from nearly 4,000 private schools across the state. Nearly one-third of K-12 students in San Francisco are educated in private schools, compared with the 10% California state average.
Yet among the Bay Area counties we surveyed, San Francisco does not have the highest average tuition for elementary or high school.
In San Francisco, we found the average private school tuition across religious and secular schools to be about $23,000 for elementary school and just
over $42,000 for high school.
Compare that with Marin County, where a lower percentage of students attend private schools, at 21%, but where average tuition is higher: $26,600 for elementary and nearly $48,000 for high school.
Part of the reason for this is that religiously affiliated schools tend to be less expensive than their secular counterparts, and, according to our analysis, Marin County has a lower percentage of religious schools than the other counties. Still, even just among religious schools, the average tuition in Marin County was the highest.
Marin County is also home to the high school with the most expensive tuition in our database, the San Domenico School. Formerly a parochial school that dropped its Catholic affiliation in 2017, San Domenico charges $78,650 for boarding school for grades 9 through 12 and $62,500 for regular day school tuition for those grades.
San Domenico also had the most expensive kindergarten enrollment at around $45,000.
Still, almost half of the Bay Area’s 23 most expensive schools in our database — those charging over $50,000 annually — are in San Francisco. And of the 316 Bay Area private schools that the Chronicle looked at, 39% cost over $25,000 this year compared with San Francisco’s 49%.
The second most expensive school in our database is San Francisco’s Bay School, serving grades 9 through 12 with tuition at about $61,000.
The private school that charged the most for elementary school was Charles Armstrong School in San Mateo, a private institution that describes itself as serving students with dyslexia, costing $54,900 this school year for grades 2 through 5.
The most expensive pre-K education was Children’s Day School in San Francisco at $42,500 annually.
Factoring in a 4% annual increase in tuition, if you start your child in a Bay Area private school this year, the average total cost of their K-12 education over the course of 13 years is estimated to be close to $500,000, though this can vary greatly depending on the type of school. For example, the average maximum tuition at religious schools is about $15,000 compared with about $35,000 at secular schools.
Private school tuition can fluctuate greatly depending on the specialized services schools offer.
For example, San Domenico has a higher cost for boarding, but schools can also be religious, experimental, international, arts-based, provide academically accelerated programs or focus on students with learning differences. All of these factors can influence cost.
Many, but not all, parochial schools offer a lower tuition for students who are parish members than those who are not. This is often to offset the extra costs associated with being a member of the religious institution, including tithe donations and membership fees.
Some schools offer extended before- and after-school programs in pre-K, kindergarten and elementary school. Some are year round, like GATE Academy, Kahlon Family Services School and the Beechwood School (through fourth grade).
A few schools in the Bay Area offer a fully customizable education, charging tuition for individualized instruction on a class-by-class basis, so that students can take as few or as many classes as needed. At Stanford Online High School, students can attend full-time, part-time or for a single class.
Some tuitions become slightly more expensive when paid in monthly installments, like the French American International School in San Francisco. For others, there is no price difference based on payment plan.
Others are tuition free, like Eastside College Preparatory School in East Palo Alto, where every student attends on a fullride scholarship that covers annual tuition.
Tuition costs can also be offset by financial aid packages, though awards vary greatly from family to family based on many need-based factors and can change year to year.
According to the California Association of Independent Schools, which represents 234 independently financed, private and nonprofit schools across California, 25% of independent school students received financial aid statewide in 2022-23, with an average award of about $24,000 per student.
In San Francisco, 27% of students received an average award of about $29,000; 30% of students received $21,000 on average in Contra Costa and Alameda counties; 25% of Marin County independent school students received an average gift of $28,000; and 18% of San Mateo County students received about $28,000.