Forsyth country day

How it works

The phrase reads like a county fair. It is a campus name. Forsyth Country Day School (FCDS) is an independent, coeducational, nonsectarian day school at 5501 Shallowford Road, Lewisville, in Forsyth County. Students go home at night. The county does not shutter because the school has a pep rally. Winston-Salem’s civic holidays remain the civic holidays.

Parents met in 1967 to plan a private school that would include a high school. The corporation was formed on 8 February 1968. William N. Reynolds III donated land with a lake and a log cabin in July 1969. The school opened on 9 September 1970 with 35 teachers and 195 students in grades 1 through 10. It later added the years around those grades. The campus now sits on wooded acreage around a lake. Athletics use the Furies nickname.

A “country day” school, here as in Winnetka, is a day school with a campus outside the old downtown core. The name describes the model, not a feast. If you needed Labor Day in North Carolina, that is the first Monday in September — in 2026, Monday 7 September. If you needed this school’s break, that is a different PDF.

A Piedmont campus, not a civic feast

Lewisville is west of Winston-Salem. Families also come from Clemmons and nearby towns. The school’s own materials describe small classes, arts, athletics, and a college-preparatory upper school. None of that converts the name into a red date on a bank calendar. A Saturday tournament can close a parking lot. It cannot close the county courthouse.

Decide whether you need the school or the county. If the school: open the FCDS academic calendar and the day’s hours. If the county: use North Carolina’s public-holiday list. Do not treat a mascot day as a statewide closing.

Accreditation and conference memberships (independent-school bodies in the South) are school facts. They are not holidays. A sports rivalry with another Piedmont independent school is a schedule, not a festival the public is invited to by default. Tickets and gates follow the athletic listing for that date.

Naming a school after a county does not give the county a second Christmas. It gives the county a campus with its own bell schedule.

How to read a school year

Independent schools print their own grids: first day, exam week, winter break, teacher workdays, and graduation. Those grids borrow some civil holidays and ignore others. A Jewish holy day, a Christian holy day, or a federal Monday may or may not appear as “no school.” The only check that matters is this year’s FCDS calendar, not a memory of last year’s early dismissal.

If you typed the name from a map pin, you want directions and office hours. If you typed it from a sports recap, you want kickoff time. If you typed it because “country day” sounded like a picnic in the Piedmont autumn, pack for a school event only after the school said there is one. The lake on campus is a campus lake. It is not a public park calendar.