Sacramento Country Day School is celebrating its 60th anniversary and tremendous achievements across six decades. Providing a rigorous and nurturing educational experience on a beautiful, expansive campus, Country Day is the Sacramento region’s only independent school serving students from pre-kindergarten through 12th grade. 

Country Day opened in September 1964 with just 12 students and today boasts a capacity student body of nearly 600 across its lower school (grades pre-K – 5), middle school (grades 6 – 8) and high school (grades 9 – 12). Offering everything from 22 AP/AT courses to 40 interscholastic sports teams, Country Day draws students from throughout the region, with some traveling from as far away as Folsom, Elk Grove and Davis. 

“The beauty of Country Day is that we don’t have a typical student,” says Head of School Lee Thomsen. “We encourage students to be the best versions of themselves, and we celebrate our student body’s diversity of backgrounds and interests. We provide $3.7 million annually in financial aid to ensure that a wonderfully wide cross-section of students have the opportunity to attend.” 

The school’s mission is to inspire intellectual discovery and engage a diverse community to think critically, live creatively and act compassionately. Constantly striving to fulfill that mission are 72 teaching faculty members, many with advanced degrees.

Country Day excels by all technical measures of success, with top standardized test scores among other private, public and charter schools in the region, and graduates accepted to prestigious, best-fit universities. The national ranking and review company Niche continues to annually rate Country Day the No. 1 private K-12 school and private high school in Sacramento.

As Country Day looks to the future, Thomsen shares, “We are working on aligning our strategic initiatives this year to support our fully enrolled campus, ensuring that we stay on top of educational excellence in our community through reimagining the footprint of our campus with updated STEM, art and music spaces to support programs across all divisions.”