Welcome to Good Hope Country Day School — a student-centered, college-preparatory, independent school serving 3-year-olds to 12th graders on the beautiful island of St. Croix, US Virgin Islands.

My wife Sally, our children, and I joined the Good Hope Country Day community in 2019. Our sons Thomas and James are in GHCDS’s 8th and 11th grades, respectively, while our oldest son William is in college in Ohio.

Our family has found Good Hope Country Day School to be an amazingly inclusive community, one that lives the values of connection, compassion, and respect for all – every day. It is a school driven to provide the best possible education for each of the children we serve, a school that provides a panoply of educational, artistic, athletic, and social opportunities at every grade level, and a school that positions its students to succeed in colleges and universities on island, across the U.S., and all over the world.

In the winter of 2019-20, our faculty developed a new mantra for our school, one that is rooted in the rich culture of St. Croix and the universal value of serving others.  Approved by our Board of Trustees in February 2020, the mantra summarizes more than 50 years of our school’s past, and projects our approach to the present and the future:

“The Island is our Classroom, the World is our Responsibility.”

Education is so much more than a “piling on of learning, information, data, facts, skills, abilities,” as Thomas Moore put it.  It’s rooted in art (Moore said), culture, and people. It’s a lifelong commitment to the betterment of ourselves, the place in which we live, and the world around us. It’s a partnership among fellow human beings, one in which we connect deeply and authentically with the people and peoples with whom we come into contact.

At GHCDS, parents, teachers, and students form a close-knit community committed to connecting deeply and authentically with one another, a community determined to deliver our school’s core values of “scholarship, citizenship, integrity, respect,” a community dedicated to preparing students “to excel in college” and “better their island and the world,” as our mission proudly states.

We are a community of big hopes and big dreams.  We welcome you to see our community in action.  Call us at 340-778-1974 to schedule a visit.

Yours sincerely,

Bill

William Bugg, Head of School, Good Hope Country Day School, wbugg@ghcds.org