St. Mary's Central School (SMC) has a pre-kindergarten program for four and five-year-old children, and one class each of kindergarten through grade eight. The average class size is sixteen students. Class size is capped at twenty-five students.

St. Mary's Central School serves children from nine Ohio public school districts in the three counties of Belmont, Harrison, and Jefferson:

• Barnesville Exempted Village School District
• Bellaire Local School District 
• Bridgeport School District
• Buckeye Local School District 
• Harrison Hills School District
• Martins Ferry City School District
• Shadyside City School District
• St. Clairsville-Richland City School District
• Union Local School District

Grades kindergarten through grade three are self-contained except for science, and physical education. Grades four and five, departmentalize for religion, math, and science. Grades six through eight departmentalize for all subjects. Junior high students, grades seven and eight, are offered electives each quarter. The elective areas of concentration are history, literature, life skills, computer technology, and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math). 

St. Mary's Central School has a dedicated science teacher for kindergarten through grade four and a dedicated science teacher for grades five through eight. St. Mary's Central School has been awarded the Ohio Governor's Award for Excellence in Science Education three times. Students participate in twice-weekly physical education classes taught by appropriately licensed teachers.

All of the classrooms are equipped with interactive, sound system enhanced, white boards, docucams, and flat screen televisions. The computer lab consists of twenty-five state-of-the-art Apple computers. This allows for each student to be able to work independently in the computer lab. Students also have access to iPads. Grades seven and eight utilize Kindles for literature class. 

The Ruth Hall Memorial Library contains over three thousand two hundred books. Using the Accelerated Reading Program, students have access to one hundred twenty-five thousand on-line comprehension tests for books they may want to read. The school utilizes the Standardized Test for the Assessment of Reading (STAR) reading level test system to establish reading levels for individual students. The STAR reading tests correlate closely with the Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS) that is the diocesan required standarized test for students in grades kindergarten through eight.