Frequently Asked Questions
For more than 70 years, St. Andrew’s has provided an exceptionally well-rounded education honoring our Scholar, Artist, Athlete and Servant pillars. Now it is time to “Raise the Roof” with these exciting building projects!
This new campaign will support best-in-class flexible classroom buildings, STEM and Design Labs, a significant improvement in our athletics facilities and fields, increased community spaces and course offerings and a transformed Middle School experience.
- We want to focused on creating the best academic programs – and proper facilities to support these programs – to challenge and inspire our students,
- We want to take advantage of our ample outdoor spaces at our Southwest Parkway campus and revitalize the use of outdoor space on our 31st Street campus with an eye on experiential and outdoor learning,
- We want to offer best-in-class sports facilities and a variety of enhanced arts programming and facilities that fuel healthy hearts, minds, and bodies.
- We want our spaces to invite collaboration, creativity and build community.
- This capital campaign will support and allow significant improvements in our ability to teach and compete at the highest levels and serve our students in creative, innovative ways. It’s an exciting time in the life of our school!
An extensive site planning process, and fundraising feasibility study, took place over an 18 month period in 2021-2022. During the course of this planning process, and with significant input from faculty, families, and St. Andrew’s leadership team, we looked at reworking our buildings, our outdoor spaces and our parking.
On our Southwest Parkway campus, , classroom expansions and improvements are very needed along with an additional gym and court space, community and gathering spaces, competition tennis facilities as well as re-imagined outdoor learning spaces to help educate and inspire our students.
- A new Athletics Complex and Student Union on Southwest Parkway.
- A New Middle School with a Fine Arts Wing and STEM Center, relocated to the Southwest Parkway Campus.
A thoughtful construction timeline was developed to ensure that our students will remain in classrooms as much as possible during these building projects.
The Athletics Complex and Student Union must come online first in order to allow for the Middle School to move to the Southwest Parkway Campus. Since it is being built on an existing parking lot, there will be no classroom disruption for this project. When the Athletics Complex and Student Union is complete, then our Middle School construction will begin (although if funding for both projects is reached, those two buildings can be constructed simultaneously).
Once the Middle School is built on Southwest Parkway, we will shift our 6-8th graders to that facility and our 4th and 5th graders will move into Dell Hall (the current Middle School on 31st Street).
Our campaign co-chairs are Yvette Rios and Roger Saundau, supported by the Board of Trustees, a strong capital campaign committee and the St. Andrew’s Leadership and Advancement team.
We have an incredibly experienced and talented team – both internally and externally – who have invested significantly in this work. We invite you to click on the link below and read about our amazing team here:
Raise the Roof Project Scope, Process and Team – Athletics Complex
We have retained LPA Architects out of San Antonio. They have extensive experience with school design, and they began working with focus groups and our Task Force in 2021 to understand our culture and pedagogy. From that process, LPA thoughtfully designed our new spaces. They continue to meet with faculty and staff to ensure that each phase of the design is aligned with our vision.
It is long overdue to invest in our Athletics Pillar. Physical activity plays an important role in a healthy mind and heart and provides the opportunity to develop a lifelong habit of a healthy lifestyle. This new facility will not only increase and improve our practice, competition and training spaces but will allow us to expand our athletics course offerings (including new competitive dance and competitive cheer programs) and manage reasonable hours of practices and rehearsals for our students.
St. Andrew’s currently has one gym with one competition court on Southwest Parkway. With both men and women’s volleyball programs and men and women’s basketball programs, managing practices and competitions is very difficult. Our practices begin at 6am and others end at 9pm, which is not ideal for Upper School students.
Additionally, with only one gym, we do not have home court advantage due to lack of court space, which means our students have to travel to Dallas/Ft. Worth or Houston to participate in competitions. With this new Athletics Complex and Student Union, St. Andrew’s will finally be able to host SPC tournaments and other competitions at home. In this new complex, a new competition court and six practice courts will be built, providing relief to our practice schedule and elevating our students’ competitive experiences.
This new competition gym will also serve as our location for Upper School Graduation and for St. Andrew’s Day. Pep rallies, service projects and more can also be held in this space with room to hold up to 800 guests in the stands.
Our existing Weight Room is less than 1,000 square feet and can safely accommodate up to 10 student athletes. With sports teams averaging in the 40’s and 50’s (and more) it is impossible for our students to train together as a team. We have world-class trainers who do not have the ability to maximize workouts and improve our student-athletes in the way they desire. With our new 5,000 square foot Sports Performance Center, entire teams will be able to take advantage of collective training and workouts to better prepare for their individual sports. Our strength and conditioning programs will also be boosted because more students will have the opportunity to participate.
The Student Union will be the first designated indoor community space for students and volunteers on our Southwest Parkway campus. We do not have adequate community space for our students to gather for studying, clubs and other activities. With the completion of the Student Union, which will also include our Spirit Shop, there will finally be a designated space for students to be together indoors in meaningful ways.
In short, this Athletics Complex and Student Union will become the heartbeat of our Southwest Parkway campus.
As we evaluated the Middle School experience, and our hopes and dreams for our 6th, 7th and 8th graders and the reality of our limited space on the 31st Street Campus, it became apparent that our students’ and faculty’s needs can best be met at the Southwest Parkway campus. We will maintain the integrity of our programming and traditions that make the Middle School experience special, but a move to Southwest Parkway will only enhance those experiences and opportunities for our Middle School students. Here’s why:
- A grades 6-12 campus will allow Upper and Middle School faculty to collaborate across their divisions, enhancing academic opportunities for our Middle School students and ensuring academic consistency as they move to the Upper School,
- Middle School students who are interested in or able can take Upper School level coursework with teachers who are experienced in that particular subject matter,
- We currently bus the majority of our middle school student athletes and artists to Southwest Parkway to take advantage of our fields and fine arts facilities on that campus. This constant busing cramps our programs and is incredibly time-consuming. Additionally, having our Middle School athletics full-time on the Southwest Parkway campus will allow those students to have increased access to athletic program directors who are all currently located at the Upper School. In that same vein, our fine arts students will have access and opportunity to benefit from those fine arts facilities and additional instructors,
- The Middle School students do not have much interaction with our Lower School students currently, and there will be improved leadership development and mentoring opportunities for Middle and Upper School students with a combined campus,
- We are out of space on 31st street to truly improve the learning experiences for our youngest students. With current admissions pressure and an eye on controlled student growth in the next decade, we must expand and improve our facilities to accommodate that growth and to best serve our academic program needs. The current Middle School building, Dell Hall, will house our 4th and 5th grade students, which will free up significant space.
- Parking on 31st street is only getting more complicated, as is traffic and street flow. Reducing the student and faculty population on that campus will relieve congestion and parking complications,
- Transportation to our Southwest Parkway campus, including other potential bus stops and routes, would be expanded to be as inclusive as possible for all our students.
As of August 2024, the Athletics Complex and Student Union is on track with $14M remaining to raise to complete the building.
The new Middle School|STEM Center are in design production.
Our construction timeline has an intentional sequence to minimize disruption for our students. The Athletics Complex and Student Union will be built on an existing parking lot (therefore not compromising existing classroom or gym spaces) and the new Middle School will also be built on an existing parking lot on the Southwest Parkway campus.
When the Middle School shifts to the Southwest Parkway campus, our fourth and fifth graders will move into Dell Hall (the current Middle School building on 31st Street).
St. Andrew’s is an independent 501(c)3, and we receive no funding from the State of Texas or the Episcopal Diocese. As in previous capital campaigns, funding for these building projects will be accomplished through fundraising efforts within our St. Andrew’s community.
We are blessed with a wide variety of support and we have received 100% support from our Board of Trustees along with generous donations from parents, grandparents, alumni and foundations.
We have carefully scoped the project to ensure its success. If an unforeseen issue arises, we would have the ability to conduct our construction in phases to match our fundraising benchmarks.
We are so grateful for your consideration! We are just a phone call away to answer any questions or schedule a meeting. Please contact Catherine Ervin, Advancement Director, at 512.299.9809 or cherter@sasaustin.org or Sherie MacKenzie, Major Gifts Officer, at 512.299.9808 or smackenzie@sasaustin.org
St. Andrew’s is happy to accept in-kind construction, furnishings or equipment gifts (if part of the design) or would be willing to work with you to design a plan that would best suit your financial needs.
Campaign gifts can be pledged over a three to five year period.
We conducted a Feasibility study in the summer and fall of 2021. The results supported an $85-$100M campaign to build the Athletics Complex and Student Union and new Middle School|STEM Center and a $5M Endowed Fund to support teacher compensation and financial aid.
As of August 1, $18.1M has been committed, allowing us to begin the first phase of construction on the Athletics Complex & Student Union. To complete this facility we need to raise $14M to reach our $32M goal. The Board of Trustees, Campaign Committee and Advancement staff are hard at work to reach this goal by the end of 2024.
We are asking our families to continue participating in the St. Andrew’s Fund and supporting the Gala for Financial Aid, as those are both critical fundraisers for our operating budget and financial aid program. The Capital Campaign is exclusively meant to build our new facilities. We deeply appreciate your support!
Security has been top of mind during the design of all of these buildings. Secure entrances and vestibles are being designed for the academic buildings to provide an extra layer of security before any person may enter a building where children are present. Pylons, bullet-proof glass and additional fencing are also part of the design.
Our architects have been working closely with our security firm, Watchmen Group, and our Director of Security, to ensure that we are developing safe and secure spaces for our students and faculty.
Our construction timeline has an intentional sequence to minimize disruption for our students. The Athletics Complex and Student Union will be built on an existing parking lot (therefore not compromising existing classroom or gym spaces) and the new Middle School will also be built on an existing parking lot on the Southwest Parkway campus.
When the Middle School shifts to the Southwest Parkway campus, our fourth and fifth graders will move into Dell Hall (the current Middle School building on 31st Street).
As Austin has grown, St. Andrew’s has grown as well. Currently we have significant waitlists and admissions pressure and there is a desire to expand our student population. Not only will this enhance our fine arts and athletics by adding more students to those programs but it allows us to improve our diversity across the board, which is an important priority for our school.
We intend to modestly grow our student body in the coming years for a maximum of 500 in the Upper School (our Upper School student population is currently 420). This means roughly 125 students per grade. In the Lower School, we will build to allow for four sections of students (currently there are three), which will feed into the Middle School student population. We will not compromise or change our small student-teacher ratios.
No. Our commitment to small student-teacher ratios will remain unchanged. We strongly believe in the value of student teacher relationships and the benefits of every child being known and cared for individually by our faculty.
There will not be a negative impact on tuition rates once these buildings come online.
Our new facilities will have a great deal of efficiencies to off-set some of our increased expenses. We have also built a 20% endowed fund into each building project to support the ongoing maintenance of these new facilities.
As our student body increases we will add more teachers to support that growth. However, by moving the Middle School to the Southwest Parkway campus we will realize some efficiencies that do not exist today. For example, the need for two part-time teachers due to campus separation could become one full-time teacher supporting both Middle School and Upper School classes on the same campus.
St. Andrew’s Endowment is our foundation for the future. A healthy endowment is essential to the financial health of an independent school. The SAS Endowment not only serves as a cushion should financial stress affect the school, but it is also composed of gifts intended to supplement scholarships, teaching chairs and departments, and administrative positions. Our St. Andrew’s Endowment currently has a balance of approximately $16 million (including pledges). A healthy endowment is essential for St. Andrew’s to thrive in an increasingly competitive environment. Throughout the country, many of the schools recognized as the best also have the largest endowments.
A $5M increase or more to our endowment fundwill allow the school to have financial flexibility in competitive teacher pay and benefits (increasingly an issue in the Austin market) without substantially increasing tuition and will also provide additional room to grow our financial aid program to build a more socioeconomically diverse student body.
Construction has begun! For the Athletics Complex & Student Union, construction has been divided into two phases. Phase 1 is the initial footprint, exteriors and plumbing/HVAC. The second phase – once the additional $14M is raised – will complete the building.
Currently we are on track to open the Athletics Complex & Student Union in fall 2025 (pending fundraising success). We intend to open our new Middle School|STEM Center in the fall of 2026.
It is an ambitious but achievable timeline, and we extend our gratitude to our Comprehensive Site Plan Task Force, Capital Campaign Committee, St. Andrew’s Leadership and our generous campaign donors for making this happen so quickly.
As of August 2024, the Athletics Complex and Student Union is on track with $14M remaining to raise to complete the building.
The new Middle School|STEM Center are in design production.
We anticipate a five year timeline for fundraising, although this number could change if we receive more gifts in the early stages of this campaign. Every gift counts!
"The Raise The Roof campaign is a pivotal endeavor, crucial to equipping our children for future success. In a world where technology and competition are constantly advancing, state-of-the-art facilities become essential. They will offer our students the opportunity to excel academically, athletically, artistically, and as servants for others. Our focus is not only on today’s needs, but creating a legacy for the next twenty years. This campaign is about attracting and nurturing the best talent out there, providing all of our students with an exceptional educational experience."
Ravi Reddy, Trustee and Lower School Parent
Let’s Raise the Roof together!
Whether it's over a cup of coffee or a scheduled meeting, we'd love to share more about how you can help shape the future of St. Andrew’s. Let’s explore the possibilities and discuss how you can make a lasting impact.
