Porter-Gaud School

The Porter-Gaud School is an independent coeducational college preparatory day school in Charleston, in the U.S. state of South Carolina. Porter-Gaud has an enrollment of some 903 students in grades 1–12 and located on the banks of the Ashley River. The school has historic ties to the Episcopal Church.

Porter-Gaud was formed in July 1964 from the merger of three schools: The Porter Military Academy (founded 1867), the Gaud School for Boys (founded 1908), and the Watt School (founded 1931). The legal name of the institution remains The Porter Academy.

The Porter Military Academy was formed in 1867 by the Reverend Dr. Anthony Toomer Porter, an Episcopal priest, to educate children orphaned during the Civil War. Established as the Holy Communion Church Institute in 1867, the school was later known as Porter Academy and eventually Porter Military Academy. William Steen Gaud established the Gaud School in 1908. In 1948, Berkeley Grimball purchased the school from Gaud and over the course of 16 years increased the enrollment to nearly 150 as the Gaud School attained a position of eminence among Southern preparatory schools. Ann Carson Elliott, Berkeley Grimball's mother, founded the Watt School in 1931, a coeducational primary school, which served as a feeder school for the Gaud School.

In 1964, the original Porter Military Academy campus in downtown Charleston was sold to the Medical University of South Carolina, and the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad (now CSX) donated the current 88-acre (360,000 m2) campus on Albemarle Point. In July 1964, the three schools merged and dropped the military program. The new entity, Porter-Gaud School, opened its doors to 435 male students in grades 1–12. As modern school facilities began taking shape across the Ashley River on the property donated by the railroad, classes met at the old Porter campus.

Porter-Gaud opened its new campus in September 1965 with an enrollment of 469 day students. In the following year it became one of the first schools in the South to adopt an open admissions policy. In 1972, the school admitted female students into the first three grades. By the fall of 1976 the program had been accelerated to include girls at all levels of the school, although Porter-Gaud has retained close ties to its sister school, Ashley Hall.

In May 2008, Porter-Gaud acquired The O'Quinn Schools, a local preschool that dates back to the early 1970s, with the intention of maintaining the names of the schools, faculties, programs, and tuition policies.

Porter-Gaud School graduates an average class size of 83 per year. The four-year average SAT score is 1310 (the average for the state of South Carolina is 1023). Porter-Gaud offers 21 Advanced Placement and 11 Honors courses, in addition to a variety of specialty semester courses. Porter-Gaud School currently offers French, Spanish and Latin. The German program, however, is to be phased out in favor of other languages such as Mandarin Chinese.

Porter-Gaud School is a member of the South Carolina Independent School Association. Porter-Gaud offers over 38 Varsity and Junior Varsity sports. The school mascot is the Cyclone.