South Hills Academy Tuition: A Transparent Guide

Try this experiment: visit the websites of five private schools in the Los Angeles area and look for their tuition. On most of them you will find a photo gallery, a mission statement, and an inquiry form. No price. You have to hand over your email, take a tour, and sometimes sit through an interview before anyone tells you what the school actually costs.

We think that order is backwards. At South Hills Academy, we publish our tuition. Five minutes on this page should tell you whether we fit your budget.

What Our Tuition Is

For the 2026–27 school year, tuition at South Hills Academy is:

• K–Grade 8 (Lower School Campus, PK–Grade 8): $8,400/year one-payment · $8,800 two-payment · $9,200 monthly plan
• Grades 9–12 (Upper School Campus): $8,900/year one-payment · $9,340 two-payment · $9,800 monthly plan
• A 17.5% sibling discount applies, and scholarships are available for qualifying high-school students.

The only reason you see a range is the payment plan you choose. There is no asterisk that doubles the number later. If you are comparing schools, write these figures down and put them next to whatever the other schools eventually tell you.

For international students on an F-1 visa, tuition is $29,750/year for K–Grade 8 and $32,600/year for Grades 9–12, and dormitory boarding (Grades 6–12) is $25,500/year including meals, transportation, and custodianship. A boarding high-schooler's complete package comes to about $58,100 per year. If that is your situation, our international admissions page has the details, and the same rule applies: the package price is the package price.

What Tuition Includes

Your tuition covers the core of what a school should be:

• Small classes of 10–15 students. That is how our classrooms are built, not a marketing average. By the second week, the teacher can tell you how your child writes and where their reading level sits.
• The full academic program at a WASC and Cognia accredited school, PK through Grade 12, with a Niche A+ rating.
• English language support (ESL) at no extra charge. If your child is still building academic English, that help is part of the program. No add-on invoice.
• Free digital learning tools our students use every day: 148 audiobooks with read-along audio, 156 bilingual books where tapping a word shows its meaning, a vocabulary app with 8,646 words built on a scientific memory schedule, a library of 127 curated speeches and talks, and a leveled reading list of 160 books. Students use all of it at no cost.

What Costs Extra

Better to tell you now than surprise you in September:

• After-school tutoring (3:30–5:30 p.m.): offered by our own teachers at about $60+ per hour. Optional one-on-one or small-group academic help; no student is required to take it.
• ACA after-school program: our structured after-school care and enrichment program runs on its own fee schedule. Contact our office for the current fee sheet.
• Lunch and certain incidentals (some field trips, certain materials) are billed separately. Again, ask our office for the current fee sheet rather than guessing. We will give you real numbers.

If a cost is not on this list and not in the fee sheet we hand you, you should not expect to see it on a bill.

How Payment Works

Most of our families do not pay tuition in one lump sum. Monthly payment plans are available. Ask our office and we will walk you through the schedule options and set up what works for your family. Questions about money are normal here; we get them every week.

The Context: What Private School Costs in the LA Area

We will not name other schools or quote their prices. You can look those up yourself, and we encourage you to. What we will say is this: private school tuition in the Los Angeles area commonly runs well above what we charge, and at many schools, several times above. When we surveyed Southern California private schools that offer boarding, SHA sat in the lowest price tier among comparable options.

Which leads to the question we want to answer head-on.

Does a Lower Price Mean a Lesser School?

No, and we can be specific about why.

Our classes hold 10 to 15 students. Many families leave larger schools because their child was one face among thirty. Our accreditation, WASC and Cognia, is the same framework that far more expensive schools carry; an accredited transcript from SHA is evaluated by colleges the same way. Our Niche rating is A+. Our graduates have been admitted to well-ranked universities, and our teachers stay after school to tutor their own students.

What we do not spend money on is what you would expect. There is no country-club campus here and no large marketing department. We are a K-12 Christian school in West Covina that decided families in the San Gabriel Valley deserve a private education they can afford: small classes, real accountability, faith woven into daily life. The price tag should not filter out everyone but the wealthy.

What If Even This Tuition Is a Stretch?

Then talk to us before you rule us out. South Hills Academy has a tuition assistance process for admitted families, and we would rather have that conversation than watch a good-fit family walk away over cost. The way to start is simple: reach out to our office, tell us your situation confidentially, and let us see what is possible. The short version: apply, tell us your situation confidentially, and let us see what is possible.

Come See What the Numbers Buy

Numbers on a page only go so far. The better test is a morning on campus: sit in a classroom of twelve students, meet the teachers, and decide for yourself.