Specialized insurance & athletic coverage
for GAPPS member schools

What Christian schools should look at in their current coverage

Most Christian schools are insured on policies written from commercial templates — the same forms used for businesses that happen to have buildings and employees. Where we most often see gaps is in the coverage pieces specific to how Christian schools actually operate. Here are three areas worth reviewing in any current policy.

Sexual misconduct coverage: how it’s handled varies dramatically by carrier

This is the coverage area with the biggest variation between niche ministry carriers and general commercial carriers. It’s also the coverage most likely to matter when something goes wrong.

Many non-niche carriers writing policies in Georgia handle sexual misconduct coverage in one of these ways:

• Excluded entirely unless you purchase a specific endorsement on top of the base policy
• Included but capped at a sublimit well below the main liability limit (often six figures, not millions)
• Covered for the entity but not individuals — meaning the school is protected, but a volunteer or employee accused of misconduct has to find their own defense
• Covered for employees but not volunteers — through a limited endorsement that pays only for defense, only until the person is found culpable, and only up to a cap (often $50,000 per person / $250,000 aggregate)

Any of those structures can leave a Christian school underprotected. The most common gap we see is the volunteer piece. Christian schools run on volunteers — parent coaches, retired teachers tutoring after school, church members helping at retreats. When a policy doesn’t fully cover volunteers for sexual misconduct allegations, a school that depends on them has to think hard about what happens if one is accused.

The Brotherhood Mutual policies we write for Christian schools cover the entity and the volunteer together, with unlimited legal defense outside the policy limit. Defense costs don’t erode the money available for a settlement — they’re paid separately, without a cap.

If you’ve never asked your current agent specifically how your policy handles sexual misconduct allegations against a volunteer, it’s worth asking. It’s one of the details that often isn’t obvious from a declarations page, and the answer can vary significantly between carriers.

Business Income and tuition

For schools with meaningful tuition revenue, the most common gap isn’t what’s covered — it’s how much.

Business Income coverage replaces revenue when a covered loss forces the school to close or suspend operations. Fire, major weather damage, a structural failure. The building rebuilds; the school’s income doesn’t.

For a Christian school, ‘business income’ means tuition. And tuition doesn’t pause when the building closes. Parents expect refunds. Teachers still expect paychecks. Loan payments are still due. Without adequate Business Income coverage, a school that loses its main building in October can be under serious financial strain by spring — regardless of what the property policy pays to rebuild.

Most Business Income limits we see were set when the policy was first written and never adjusted as the school grew. When we review a school’s coverage, one of the first numbers we check is Business Income relative to current annual tuition, and how many months of operations that coverage actually funds.

Student accident: the coverage many schools don’t carry — and the one that often prevents the lawsuit

Many Christian schools we review don’t carry a student accident policy. Not because they decided they didn’t need one — usually because no one suggested it, or because it was bundled into a conversation about property and liability and forgotten.

Student accident is a separate policy that pays medical expenses when a student, volunteer, or participant gets hurt during a school activity. No deductible on most plans. It pays on top of the family’s health insurance to cover what the family’s plan doesn’t — and if the family has no health plan, it pays as primary coverage.

The coverage is broader than most people assume. It typically extends to:

• Sports practices, games, and school-sponsored athletic programs
• PE class, recess, and in-school injuries
• Field trips, retreats, camps, and day trips
• Church festivals, fundraisers, and outreach events
• Before-school and after-school programs, preschool, and childcare
• Volunteers participating in any of the above

Most student accident policies also include benefits for concussion, accidental death and dismemberment, paralysis, and home tutoring when an injury keeps a student out of school.

Here’s why it matters more than it sounds.

When a student is injured at school, the family has medical bills. If the school has a student accident policy, those bills get paid quickly — often before the family has even thought about whether to involve a lawyer. The family gets taken care of. The school’s liability coverage stays untouched. Everyone moves on.

If the school doesn’t have a student accident policy, the same injury plays out differently. The family’s health insurance pays what it pays. The family is left with the deductible, the copays, and whatever their plan doesn’t cover. They start looking at the school’s liability policy — which is designed for negligence claims, not medical bills. The conversation that should have ended with an insurance payment starts heading toward a lawsuit instead.

Student accident coverage is surprisingly affordable for most Christian schools — a K–12 school of about 330 students with full sports, football, before/after care, summer camp, and volunteer coverage can typically be insured for under $2,000 a year.