Original Research by School Decision on St. James High
St. James High is a large regular public high school in Murrells Inlet, South Carolina, serving ninth through twelfth grade within the Horry 01 school district. The school sits in an unincorporated coastal community that began as a fishing village and has transformed into a tourism and retirement destination. The area’s commercial heart is the MarshWalk, a boardwalk lined with seafood restaurants and live music, while nearby Brookgreen Gardens and Huntington Beach State Park draw visitors and support the local economy. Murrells Inlet has seen rapid population growth over recent decades, and that expansion continues to shape the residential and commercial landscape.
The housing market in the school’s zip code is moderately priced relative to national benchmarks, though values have edged down slightly in the past year. Rents have risen, and for a typical household the cost of renting is a manageable share of income. The area’s growth context means families moving here are often part of a broader influx of residents drawn to the Grand Strand region.
St. James High enrolls a substantial student body for a high school, with a student population that is predominantly white. Hispanic and Black students together make up close to one in five of the student body, with smaller numbers of Asian students and those identifying as two or more races. A notable share of students come from households with low enough incomes to qualify for free or reduced-price meals. Data on students receiving special education services or English learner supports was not available from the source used here.
The school’s academic performance picture is largely undocumented in the data we examined. State testing results were not available, and the four-year graduation rate was also missing. Because these are standard metrics for a regular high school, a parent or resident may want to ask the school directly about proficiency rates, graduation outcomes, and any recent trends. Without those figures, it is not possible to compare St. James High to other high schools in Horry County on the usual measures. The school is not a charter or magnet school, and its Title I status was not reported in the data set.
No information was provided about the school’s program offerings, such as Advanced Placement courses, career and technical education pathways, dual enrollment, or extracurricular activities. The absence of that detail makes it hard to assess the breadth of academic or vocational options available to students. Similarly, data on discipline, staffing, and chronic absenteeism were not included.
The district itself, Horry 01, showed no recent notable changes or initiatives in the search we conducted. That does not mean the district is static, only that publicly reported developments were not found in this round of research.
St. James High sits in a growing coastal community where the economy leans heavily on tourism and hospitality. The school is large, serves a diverse student body by income and race, and operates without the publicly reported academic benchmarks that many families rely on when evaluating a high school. Those metrics are typically available for South Carolina public schools, so their absence here may simply reflect the limits of the data we accessed. A prospective family should plan to gather current test scores, graduation rates, and program listings directly from the school or district to get a fuller sense of the academic environment.
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