A Message from the Headmaster

Dear Prospective Parents:

Thank you for your interest in St. Croix Country Day School. I hear all the time from visiting parents, and I know as a parent myself, that the choice of a school for our children is one of the most important considerations in our lives.There are five reasons I think Country Day is the finest school on St. Croix and should be your choice:

1. We have a stable and extremely capable faculty. St. Croix tends to be a transient place, and some schools have high turnover in their faculties. Our teaching faculty of 60 people has over 1,000 years of experience, with more than 500 years of it at Country Day. That is an average of 10 years experience at CDS per teacher. We have experience where it counts, in the classroom.

2. We have an active and involved parent body. Country Day School was founded by parents who wanted quality education for their children, and the goal remains our paramount mission. Half of our Board of Trustees is a parent, and we have an active and involved Parents' Council that provides activities and support for our school community.

3. We have made a commitment to technology. If we are going to prepare our children for the future, we need to give them access to the best tools and the best training in computers. We have spent over $5 million to install a state-of-the-art computer system on our campus with underground fiber optic cable that connects every computer in every building to a system of three central servers. We have computers in every classroom with Smart Boards or large screen monitors, and a hard-wired T-1 line gives every computer immediate access to the Internet. We have four fixed computer labs including a dedicated lab for elementary students with age appropriate technology, software and furniture. We also have a rolling cart of laptops and wireless hubs in every classroom for grades 5 and up so that we can use any of those rooms as a computer room. We offer our faculty extensive training to make sure they have the skills necessary to use the equipment with your children. Our advanced computer students have passed the Microsoft Certification test to become Microsoft Certified Professionals.

4..We offer a wide range of enrichment activities for students at all ages. Our students take art, music, foreign language (i.e., Spanish or French), computer, PE, and after school activities, including intramural and interscholastic sports. Indeed, our athletic program is one of the finest in the Caribbean. Country Day students are encouraged to participate in sports such as volleyball, soccer, basketball, sailing and swimming. We have the only Olympic swimming pool in the Virgin Islands. In the areas of the visual and performing arts,

we offer choral music, instrumental and steel pans, two drama productions per year, and an independent art gallery. Our Mini Gusto program for students in grades 7-12 give those students a chance to choose from a range of interest activities and career placements not available at any other school.

5. The proof of our success is in our graduates. 100% of our students are accepted at colleges and universities, almost always at their first choice schools. Last year's 36 graduates received over $4 million in scholarship offers; seven of them received offers for full scholarships. Most important, our graduates have gone on to be successful at prestigious universities across the country.