Savannah country day

How it works

The Savannah Country Day School, also called SCDS or Country Day, is an independent co-educational college-preparatory campus on Savannah’s south side. It is not a feast on the civil calendar. It does not close banks in Georgia. “Savannah country day” as a search is almost always the school: its hours, its breaks, its sports nickname Hornets, its colours green and gold. Treat it as an institution with a year, not as a patriotic Tuesday.

The school year is the school’s own. Independent schools in the United States set calendars that often echo federal holidays and then add fall break, a long Thanksgiving week, winter break, a mid-winter in-service day, Presidents’ Day, a spring break, and Good Friday. The published highlights change by year. Read the current PDF or portal for the year you need. Do not reuse last year’s first-day date as this year’s law. Campus gates and the Hornet Shop also publish their own clocks. The school states that campus closes for federal holidays. That is a campus rule, not a city ordinance named Savannah Country Day.

People sometimes want a “founders day” because other pages in this set are Greek-letter Founders Days. Country Day has founding years, not a national Founders Day parade. If an alumni oyster roast or a Hornets Home for the Holidays gathering is advertised, that is an alumni event on a date the school chooses. It is not Georgia’s public holiday list.

What the school calendar actually closes

A typical Country Day year, from the school’s own recent highlights, includes a Little School start in early August, a JK–12 first day in mid-August, Labor Day, an October fall break, a full Thanksgiving week, a December winter break with a noon dismissal, a January return, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a February faculty day, Presidents’ Day, a March spring break, Good Friday, a last day of classes in May, and a Saturday graduation. Little School closures do not always match JK–12 closures. That mismatch is written on the highlights sheet on purpose. Do not assume the preschool follows the upper school, or the reverse.

City of Savannah public schools, Chatham County offices, and federal workers use other calendars. A teacher workday at Country Day is not a city holiday. A Country Day spring break is not automatically Savannah-Chatham’s spring break. If you need to know whether a downtown office is open, do not call the Hornet Shop. If you need to know whether the Stillwood Drive gate is open, do not use the federal list alone: the school also locks some gates on weekends, holidays, and summer.

School, not holiday: Savannah Country Day School, Savannah, Georgia. 1955: Country Day founded; took on Pape School assets, faculty, and many students. 1905: Pape School founded by Nina Anderson Pape; the board later recognised 1905 on the school seal.

1960: move to the Windsor Park campus south of the city. Closings: follow that year’s school calendar; campus names federal holidays as closed days. A school named Country Day is not a countryside feast. It is a campus with a calendar, and the calendar is the only “holiday” list it owns.

Founding years, not a civic feast

Nina Anderson Pape opened the Pape School in 1905. In 1955 a group of parents, including Cornelia Groves, organised Savannah Country Day and took over Pape’s faculty, curriculum, student body, and the facilities east of Forsyth Park. Robert W. Trusdell was the first headmaster. In 1960 the school left that in-town site for Windsor Park. In 2008 the Board of Trustees formally recognised 1905 as the founding date on the seal, so the lamp of learning carries 1905 even though the Country Day name is 1955. Both years are true. They answer different questions: when the predecessor began, and when this corporation began.

Traditions the school itself describes are student rites, not public holidays: seniors walking kindergarteners into a first assembly, kindergarteners walking seniors out of a last one, a senior bike parade, an eighth-grade Everglades trip, a freshman weekend in north Georgia. Those belong to enrolled families. A visitor to Savannah in March is not “keeping Savannah Country Day” by walking a square. The historic district is a different map.

If you needed a holiday page, this is the honest one: there is no National Savannah Country Day. There is a school, two founding years, and a calendar you must read for the year in front of you.