Wakefield Country Day School

In the early 1970s, newlywed teachers William and Pamala Lynn decided to established a school—the school that would become Wakefield Country Day School— because they wished to create a British-style private school that was affordable for the middle class. Using land owned by William Lynn's mother, they constructed a school building and opened enrollment for students in 1972. Philippe Cugnon, a Frenchman and college professor, was brought on to serve as the first headmaster. After a year, William took over. Both founders taught full-time at the school from its founding. William Lynn also wrote the first Word of the Day and Great 100 books and established traditions such as the annual competition between "Spartan" and "Athenian" athletic teams. William Lynn served as headmaster until his sudden death in 1988.

In 1991, while the school was under Allen Sounders's leadership, a significant portion of the school's administration, faculty, and students split away to reestablish the school as Wakefield School in Marshall, Virginia.[7] Throughout this process, Wakefield Country Day School, at its original campus and under the leadership of founder Pamala Lynn, continued to operate. In the immediate aftermath of the split, WCDS saw a steep enrollment drop but the numbers grew substantially thereafter.[8] In the decades since, both schools have continued to operate as separate entities. Wakefield School has tended to have more students,[9] while the enrollment of WCDS has been lower, hovering around or below 200 students.[10]

Serving a sparsely populated rural area, Wakefield Country Day School has never been a large school. Because of low enrollment, it has experienced funding crises that threatened to force its closure, but it has always survived thanks to donations and long-term loans from the alumni and community at large.[4]

The most recent such crisis happened in May of 2019 and received significant coverage in local news media, especially the Rappahannock News.[11][12] The school's entire board of directors resigned during the crisis, and a new board, with chairman Paul F. Larner, was installed. In 2020 Paul F. Larner became Head of School and has been instrumental in returning the school to its current state of financial viability and sustainability.

The school is organized as a nonprofit corporation, with an elected board of directors. However, the Lynn family has always been involved in its governance. One permanent seat on the board is set aside for a member of the Lynn family. Currently Welby Lynn Griffin, daughter of the founders and teacher of Latin, History, and English at the school occupies this post. The board also includes parent, faculty, alumni, and community representatives.[13]

From May to November 2019, benefactors donated more than $2 million to the school for tuition assistance and to support ongoing operations.[17] This included $1.2 million in scholarships to fund 25 students for three years.[18]

According to the school, every family with demonstrated financial need is offered assistance via scholarships or financial aid, with most of them ultimately accepting it and enrolling their children, deeming the help sufficient to meet their needs. As of September 2022, 70 percent of WCDS students were receiving some form of financial assistance. However, the school notes, "no family at WCDS receives full tuition assistance. All families are expected to pay something toward their children's education".[19]

Facing the highway, this is the central facade of the historic building. It was constructed in 1972 from prefabricated A-Frames, chosen by the founders to give the school an architecture distinctly different from the public schools of the time.

WCDS traditions include the weekly assembly in which the Head of School makes announcements to the school body,[20] the annual Spartans vs. Athenians competition, Certamen, the Latin convention,[21] the Medieval Banquet, and National Parks Day. All 7th and 8th graders travel to England as an extension of their study of British history.[20] High schoolers take a trip to Italy (for upper school classics), France, Spain, or Argentina (for upper school language immersion).[22]

Academic traditions include the Word of the Day in which students memorize vocabulary, and the Great 100, in which students memorize the biographies of 100 important historical figures. The school's colors are red and white; in the Spartans vs. Athenians competition, which is inspired by the Ancient Olympic Games and serves essentially as a field day, the students are divided into two teams, with the Spartans wearing red and the Athenians wearing white. First, each team assembles into a formation of parallel rows for inspection by the faculty for proper discipline and deportment. Then they participate in a series of competitions, such as Capture the Flag.

British traditions such as the use of demerits and elected prefects to enforce discipline are practiced.[23] Prefects may be put in charge of overseeing their classes in the absence of the teacher, and together the prefects form a court to question students suspected of violating the academic honor code. Older students also mentor younger students through the Language Ambassador, Reading Buddy and Bus Buddy programs.

Students wear uniforms, including a dress uniform on Wednesdays, the day of the weekly assembly.

Notable students have included, for example, Leonard M. Cowherd III, who graduated from West Point, graduated third in his United States Army Armor School class at Fort Knox, and was commissioned as a U.S. Army second lieutenant.[24] While stationed overseas in the Iraq War, he wrote a series of guest columns to the Culpeper Star-Exponent about his experiences and observations as a tank platoon leader.[25][26] After exiting his tank[27] to secure a building near Karbala's Mukhayam mosque, which had been the scene of intense fighting during a recent raid to oust the Mehdi Army insurgents who had been using the mosque as a base of operations,[28][29] he received enemy sniper and rocket-propelled grenade fire and was killed. Subsequently, his story and correspondence were featured in the Bill Couturié documentary Last Letters Home.[30] A scholarship was established in Cowherd's memory.[31]

Another notable student was Jacob G. Foster, who placed number one in the world on advanced placement tests in French literature, calculus, modern European history, biology, Latin, physics, and other subjects; scored a perfect 1600 on the Scholastic Aptitude Test;[32] and became a Rhodes scholar and later a mathematical physicist and sociologist.[33][34][35]

• Wakefield Country Day School