Christian School Insurance in Georgia: The 2026 Coverage Checklist
The short answer
The school year is already moving — which is exactly when coverage gaps surface. This checklist walks a Christian school business manager through the seven coverages to verify this fall, what each one actually protects, and the questions to ask before renewal season arrives.
Insurance coverage for private schools isn’t one policy — it’s a package of six or seven distinct coverages, and a gap in any one of them can put the school’s budget, board, or students at risk. This checklist covers what a Georgia Christian school should verify in 2026: property valuation, liability scope, abuse and molestation coverage, vehicles, workers’ comp, employment practices, and cyber.
A business manager at a Christian school south of Atlanta — call him Greg — opened his renewal packet last fall and found an 18% increase. His first instinct was to shop it. His second instinct was better: he pulled the actual policies and realized nobody had reviewed them since 2021. Enrollment had grown by sixty students. The school had added an aftercare program, two vans, and a gym.
The premium wasn’t the problem. The policies still described a school that no longer existed.
That’s the situation this checklist is for. The school year is underway, renewal season is coming, and the time to find a gap is now — while it’s a checkbox, not a claim.
1. Is your building insured at replacement cost — today’s replacement cost?
A school building insured for what it was worth in 2021 will not rebuild in 2026. Construction costs in Georgia have risen sharply over the past several years, and a policy that hasn’t had its building limit reviewed recently is very likely underinsured. Verify the limit reflects current rebuild cost, not purchase price or an old appraisal.
Pull your declarations page and look at the building limit. Then ask the harder question: if the main building burned down this semester, would that number rebuild it — gym floor, HVAC, code upgrades and all?
Also check how the policy pays: replacement cost coverage rebuilds; actual cash value pays depreciated value, which for an older school building can be a fraction of the rebuild bill. And if your roof is past a certain age, look for roof-specific limitations — some policies quietly move older roofs to actual-cash-value terms at renewal.
2. Does your liability coverage match what your school actually does now?
General liability follows your operations — and school operations change. Aftercare, sports programs, field trips, facility rentals, and summer programs each carry their own exposure. If a program didn’t exist when the policy was written, confirm it’s contemplated now, and confirm an umbrella policy sits above the underlying limits.
This is where Greg’s story bites. His school’s policy predated the aftercare program and the gym. The fix wasn’t expensive — it was a conversation with the agent — but nobody had started it.
Make a plain list of everything the school runs: athletics (especially high-contact sports), aftercare, field trips, facility rentals to outside groups. Hand it to your agent and ask one question: is all of this covered as we do it today?
While you’re there, ask about the umbrella. A $1M general liability limit with an umbrella above it is the structure most schools should be discussing — student injury claims are exactly the kind that can exceed a primary limit.
3. Abuse and molestation coverage: separate limit, and who pays the lawyers?
Two structural questions determine whether abuse and molestation coverage actually protects your school: does it carry its own limit (rather than sharing general liability’s), and are defense costs paid outside the limit? Many policies fail one or both — and the gap only becomes visible during a claim.
We wrote a full board-level walkthrough of this coverage — what boards must verify on abuse and misconduct coverage — and it’s the single most important item on this checklist. The short version: confirm the coverage exists explicitly, confirm the limit is separate, and ask whether defense costs erode the limit or sit outside it. Legal defense in a misconduct claim can run into six figures before any verdict; whether that money comes out of your coverage limit is the difference between protected and exposed.
If your board can’t answer those questions from memory, that’s this month’s agenda item.
4. Vans, buses, and the field-trip question
Any vehicle that carries students needs to be on the policy — including the 15-passenger van a parent donated and the personal cars staff drive on field trips. Verify every owned vehicle is scheduled, and ask specifically about hired and non-owned auto coverage for the vehicles the school doesn’t own but still puts students in.
Fifteen-passenger vans deserve special attention: some carriers restrict or surcharge them, and some schools are running one the carrier doesn’t know about. If your school has added, retired, or been given a vehicle since the policy was written, reconcile the schedule now.
Hired and non-owned auto is the quiet one — it’s what responds when a teacher drives three students to a regional competition in her own car. It’s inexpensive. It’s also frequently missing.
5. Workers’ comp: Georgia’s three-employee rule
Georgia requires workers’ compensation once an employer has three or more employees — a threshold nearly every school crosses. Verify the policy exists, verify the payroll figures it’s rated on are current, and understand that it covers employees only, not classroom volunteers.
For a school, the payroll audit is the practical issue: if enrollment growth added staff, the policy’s payroll basis should reflect it — an audit true-up after the fact is a budget surprise nobody enjoys. And if your school leans on volunteers, know that workers’ comp doesn’t follow them; volunteer injuries live under your liability and accident coverages, which is worth confirming rather than assuming.
6. Employment practices and the board itself
Schools employ people and are governed by boards — which means wrongful-termination, discrimination, and mismanagement allegations are real exposures. Employment practices liability (EPLI) and directors & officers (D&O) coverage protect the school and the volunteers who govern it. Many school packages carry neither.
A teacher contract non-renewal that turns into a dispute is the classic school EPLI claim. A parent group challenging a board decision is the classic D&O claim. Neither is covered by general liability. Ask your agent whether both coverages are in the package, and at what limits — board members serving without D&O protection are personally closer to a lawsuit than most of them realize.
7. Cyber: tuition money moves electronically now
A school that collects tuition electronically, stores family data, and pays vendors by wire has the same cyber exposure as any small business — plus a database full of children’s information. Verify cyber coverage exists, and ask specifically whether it covers social-engineering and wire-transfer fraud, not just data breach response.
The claim we see isn’t a Hollywood hack — it’s an email that looks like it came from the head of school, asking the bookkeeper to change a vendor’s bank details. Coverage for that kind of fraud is often a separate insuring agreement with its own (sometimes very low) sub-limit. It’s worth knowing your number before you need it.
Greg’s renewal, for what it’s worth, ended up costing less attention than the gaps did. The checklist above took his board one meeting to work through with their agent — seven questions, most answered in minutes, two that turned into fixes.
That’s the honest pitch for doing this now: most items will check out fine, and the ones that don’t are cheap to fix in October and expensive to discover in a claim. If you’d rather walk through it with someone who reviews Christian school insurance in Georgia every week, request a coverage review — we’ll go through your actual policies against this list, and if everything’s solid, we’ll tell you it’s solid.
Frequently Asked Questions
What insurance does a private Christian school in Georgia need?
The core package: property coverage at current replacement cost, general liability sized to actual operations, abuse and molestation coverage with a separate limit, commercial auto for any school vehicles (plus hired/non-owned coverage), workers’ compensation (required in Georgia at three or more employees), employment practices liability, directors & officers coverage for the board, and cyber coverage that includes wire-fraud protection.
Is abuse and molestation coverage included in a school’s general liability policy?
Often not — and never assume it is. Many general liability policies exclude abuse and molestation entirely or require a separate endorsement. The structural details matter as much as the coverage itself: whether the limit is separate from general liability, and whether defense costs are paid outside the limit. Confirm all three in writing.
Does Georgia require workers’ compensation for private schools?
Yes — Georgia law requires workers’ compensation coverage once an employer regularly has three or more employees, a threshold virtually every school meets. The coverage applies to employees only; volunteers are not covered by workers’ comp and fall under the school’s liability and accident coverages instead.
How often should a Christian school review its insurance coverage?
Annually, before renewal — and immediately after any material change: new programs (aftercare, athletics), enrollment growth that adds staff, new or donated vehicles, building additions, or hosting outside groups. A policy describes the school as it existed when the policy was written; the review’s job is to close the gap between that snapshot and today.
Do school insurance premiums always go up at renewal?
Not always, but property rates across the market have risen in recent years, and schools with older roofs or growing operations often see increases — typically in the 12–35% range when they happen. An increase isn’t automatically a reason to switch carriers; it’s a reason to verify you’re paying for coverage that matches your school, then compare from an informed position.
What is hired and non-owned auto coverage for a school?
It’s the coverage that responds when vehicles the school doesn’t own are used for school business — a teacher driving students in her personal car, a rented van for a retreat. Without it, an accident on a field trip in a staff member’s car can leave the school’s liability coverage on the sidelines. It’s one of the least expensive items on this checklist and one of the most commonly missing.