With inclusive tuition, every student receives everything that they need to participate fully in The Bay School experience.
Bay's Inclusive Tuition Model
Inclusive tuition means that virtually all supplemental costs (listed below) for a student’s experience at Bay are accounted for. Including these costs up-front allows families to plan effectively and avoid incurring additional fees after enrollment. This is an uncommon practice among Bay Area independent schools, at many of which families should expect to pay more than $5,000 in fees.
Tuition and Fees 2025–2026
Bay's tuition is set each year by the Board of Trustees. Our total cost for the 2025–2026 school year is $67,211, of which $4,105 is the inclusive fee, and Bay is providing $5.9 million in flexible tuition grants, supporting approximately 36% of our students.
The inclusive fee covers:
- A MacBook for every student, including educational and office software applications, technical support, maintenance, and repair
- All school-related travel and field trips, including for Immersives, clubs, and student leadership conferences
- All books and materials, including a scientific calculator
- Food service, including daily lunch (soup, salad bar, entree), morning and afternoon snacks, and beverages
- Any needed technology, such as tablets and graphing calculators
- Athletic uniforms, travel, and equipment
- Immersives and Senior Project costs
- College test prep
In 2025–2026 Bay is providing $5.9 million in flexible tuition grants.
Flexible Tuition
The Bay School of San Francisco is committed to serving students of all economic backgrounds. Each family is asked to make a financial contribution toward the cost of a Bay education, but no one should hesitate to apply for admission due to financial reasons.
Starting in fall 2025, applications for flexible tuition will be managed through Clarity.
Frequently Asked Questions
Bay’s flexible tuition committee will review each family's financial profile based on the information provided in the Clarity application. All flexible tuition decisions are confidential.
The Bay School of San Francisco is committed to socioeconomic diversity and has a robust budget for flexible tuition; however, the budget is finite, and as is the case with most independent schools, we are unable to provide every qualifying family an award of flexible tuition.
Parents/guardians who are divorced or separated must each submit their financial information.
Admission decisions are made independently from applications for flexible tuition.
Families are required to apply for flexible tuition each year. Flexible tuition awards are need-based and need must be evaluated annually. A change in your family's financial circumstances may cause your award amount to increase or decrease.
Award decisions are released along with the admissions decisions in March. If a family accepts Bay's award offer, the deadline for returning a signed contract is Thursday of the following week.