Private Schools in Tampa and Hillsborough County

Hillsborough County, the school district that covers Tampa, had 182 private schools in the state's 2024-25 count, enrolling 30,084 students from prekindergarten through grade 12 (Florida Department of Education).

Those Hillsborough figures come from the Florida Department of Education's Florida's Private Schools 2024-25 annual report, built from online surveys the schools completed between August 30, 2024 and June 2, 2025 (FLDOE annual report). Statewide the same report counts 3,252 private schools and 496,519 students, so Hillsborough holds roughly 6 percent of both. The report is the newest one on the department's list of annual reports (FLDOE).

A second, federal count gives a smaller number for the city itself. The National Center for Education Statistics Private School Universe Survey for the 2023-24 school year returns 71 private schools with a Tampa mailing address (NCES). The two counts do not conflict so much as measure different things: the NCES search covers one city name and an earlier year, while the FLDOE figure covers the whole Hillsborough district, including Brandon, Riverview and Plant City.

The Hillsborough count from FLDOE is not an audited roll. The department says the accuracy of data submitted in the annual survey is not verified by it (FLDOE annual report).

In the federal 2023-24 survey, Berkeley Preparatory School is the largest Tampa private school with 1,423 students, followed by Carrollwood Day School with 1,230 and American Youth Academy with 1,064 (NCES).

Two schools in the table, Ivy Global School at 8875 Hidden River Pkwy with 909 students (NCES) and Universal Academy of Florida at 6801 Orient Rd with 823 (NCES), appear only on later pages of the five-page Tampa list. Two of the ten teach only high school grades: Jesuit High School at 4701 N Himes Ave reports 867 students in grades 9 to 12 (NCES), and Tampa Catholic High School at 4630 N Rome Ave reports 752 in the same grades (NCES). Downtown, Tampa Preparatory School at 727 W Cass St reports 712 students in grades 6 to 12 (NCES).

Most of the 71 Tampa results are far smaller. The same search lists Apollo Academy on W Swann Ave with 21 students in kindergarten to grade 4 and Cornerstone Foundation Academy on W Linebaugh Ave with 18 (NCES). NCES notes that inclusion in its locator is not an endorsement and should not be used to infer accreditation.

By the schools' own accounts, the Academy of the Holy Names on Bayshore Boulevard was founded in 1881, Jesuit High School in 1899 and Berkeley Preparatory School in 1960.

The Academy of the Holy Names describes itself as a Catholic school for boys and girls in pre-kindergarten through 8th grade and a college preparatory high school for young women, on 19 acres along Bayshore Boulevard (Academy of the Holy Names). It was founded and is guided by the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary, the school says.

Jesuit High School traces itself to 1899 in downtown Tampa, when the Jesuit priests of Sacred Heart Church founded Sacred Heart College (Jesuit High School). The school says it changed names and downtown locations over the next decades, took the Jesuit High School name in 1940 and moved to its permanent Himes Avenue campus in 1956.

Berkeley Preparatory School says Tampa Bay families established it in 1960 as an independent coed day school, an alternative to boarding school, and that classes began in 1961 at St. Andrew's Parish House with 140 students (Berkeley Preparatory School). Berkeley describes itself as an Episcopal day school and says it is accredited through the Florida Council of Independent Schools and the Southern Association of Independent Schools. Those accreditations are private bodies; as the next section explains, the State of Florida does not accredit any Tampa private school.

No: the Florida Department of Education says private elementary and secondary schools in Florida, including every one in Hillsborough County, are not licensed, approved, accredited, or regulated by the department (FLDOE).

What the state does require of each Tampa private school is a yearly filing. Section 1002.42 of the Florida Statutes directs the department to keep a database of private schools and requires each school to execute and file an annual database survey form, while stating the Legislature's intent not to regulate, control, approve, or accredit private educational institutions (Florida Statutes, s. 1002.42). The results feed the department's statewide Directory of Private Schools, which the department keeps as a service to the public (FLDOE).

A Tampa family checking a school can open the directory, choose HILLSBOROUGH from the district list, and filter for non-religious, religious or military schools, for scholarship participation (FES Educational Options, FTC, FES Unique Abilities, PEP) or for hybrid schools (FLDOE Private Schools Directory). The directory carries its own warning that inclusion of a school does not imply approval or accreditation by the department. Accreditation, where a school has it, comes from private associations such as those Berkeley lists.

Two other provisions of the same statute matter in practice for Tampa students. Attendance at a private, parochial, religious, or denominational school satisfies the state's attendance requirements, and a private school may compete athletically with a public high school under s. 1006.20 (Florida Statutes, s. 1002.42). That second rule is what allows a Tampa private school team to play a Hillsborough County public high school.

Two state programs, the Family Empowerment Scholarship and the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship, can pay at participating Tampa private schools, and families apply for the Family Empowerment Scholarship through one of two scholarship funding organizations, one of which has a Tampa post office box (FLDOE).

The department says that on March 27, 2023, Governor Ron DeSantis signed House Bill 1, which expanded school choice options for all Florida students, Hillsborough County's included (FLDOE). The Family Empowerment Scholarship for Educational Options offers any K-12 student options such as attending a participating private school, and families apply and renew every year through an approved scholarship funding organization, which determines and distributes the funding.

FLDOE lists two such organizations. A.A.A. Scholarship Foundation-FL, LLC uses P.O. Box 15719, Tampa, FL 33684, phone and fax 888-707-2465; Step Up For Students uses P.O. Box 54367 in Jacksonville, phone 877-735-7837 (FLDOE).

The Florida Tax Credit Scholarship dates from 2001, and Tampa families apply by contacting an eligible scholarship funding organization directly. The Legislature created it to fund scholarships through state tax credits for contributions to nonprofit scholarship funding organizations, and FLDOE gives the 2024-25 tax credit amount as $1,091,957,093 (FLDOE). As of the 2023-24 school year, financial eligibility restrictions were eliminated; priority goes first to households at or below 185 percent of the federal poverty level, or children in foster or out-of-home care, then to households above 185 percent but not above 400 percent.

One caution for Tampa readers checking these pages in fall 2026: the FTC page still describes the 2024-25 tax credit and a 2025-26 cap of up to 100,000 personalized education program students not enrolled in a private school (FLDOE), so its program figures have not been updated for the 2026-27 school year. A school's own participation shows in the directory's scholarship filters.

Hillsborough private school enrollment is heaviest in prekindergarten, with 2,922 students in 2024-25, and lightest in grade 12, with 1,442, so the senior class is about half the size of the youngest group (FLDOE annual report).

The band totals add up the single-grade figures in the Hillsborough row of the report: 2,382, 2,291, 2,268, 2,211 and 2,195 for grades 1 to 5; 2,277, 2,259 and 2,167 for grades 6 to 8; and 1,912, 1,701, 1,514 and 1,442 for grades 9 to 12 (FLDOE annual report). The drop after grade 8 fits the Tampa list above, where many schools stop at grade 5 or grade 8 and only a handful, such as Jesuit, Tampa Catholic and Tampa Prep, center on the upper grades.

Last verified: October 18, 2026, against the Florida Department of Education's 2024-25 private school report, its directory and scholarship pages, the 2026 text of s. 1002.42 on the Florida Senate site, and the NCES private school search for Tampa.