Saint James School is accredited through New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC). Click here to view their website. This was a voluntary two year process where everyone will work on the self study to see how Saint James can become even better than it already is. There is a great article about this in the Biddeford Saco OOB Journal. Click here to view the article.
The first part of the process was to look at our mission statement and see if it fits the school. Here is the mission statement that was written by staff and approved at our Catholic Education Board meeting which truly reflects why we are all here at Saint James School.
Mission Statement
Saint James is a Catholic parochial school committed to fostering spiritual, intellectual, social, emotional, and physical growth in a S.A.F.E.* and collaborative environment while empowering students to be creative, to think critically, to act responsibly, and to serve with integrity.
*Service-Academics-Faith-Excellence
An anonymous survey was created that gave teachers, parents and alumni the opportunity to give their impressions of the school. Students, staff and parents were all sent surveys and the information gleaned from these surveys will help us to make this school even better.
Teachers have been working at every early dismissal looking at the curriculum and how it relates to the standards and indicators of NEASC. Those notes were used to write our self study. The entire faculty and staff worked on the self-study and wrote a document over one hundred and fourteen pages long detailing the school. A visiting team of five individuals comprised of principals, assistant principals, curriculum coordinators and teachers came to the school to validate the study and make recommendations and commendations to the school. The commission voted on our ten year accreditation in February of 2018 and were very complimentary. The two year report was submitted and accepted in 2020. We will be submitting the five year report in April of 2023 but Saint James School is proud to say that we are accredited through NEASC until 2028!