Church Schools in the Diocese of Virginia (CSDV) was created by the Council of the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia in 1919 and incorporated on June 8, 1920, during a postwar era when urban schools were overcrowded and rural areas had only a few schools, separated by vast distances.
CSDV’s founding charge was to purchase existing schools that needed financial support, to build new schools to serve more students, and to provide scholarships for the growing number of orphaned children.
That first year, CSDV purchased three underfunded schools — St. Anne’s School in Charlottesville and the renamed St. Catherine’s School and St. Christopher’s School in Richmond.
The corporation then turned its attention to the underserved Tidewater region, where it established St. Margaret’s School for girls in Tappahannock and Christchurch School for boys in Middlesex County, near Urbanna. Both schools began operations in September 1921 and quickly drew boarding students from parts of Virginia and beyond, where reliable schools — especially for girls — were lacking.
The start of World War II brought a population wave to Northern Virginia. The arrival of so many girls exceeded what the facilities at St. Agnes School, which had been founded in 1924, could accommodate. In need of funding for new space, the leadership of St. Agnes pursued adding the school to the Church Schools system, which the CSDV Trustees approved in 1944.
Around this same time, CSDV planned a boys’ school to meet the growing population in Alexandria. St. Stephen’s School opened in 1944 with roughly 100 boys in grades 3-8.
St. Stephen’s became the first of the Church Schools to desegregate its student body, admitting its first Black student, Lloyd “Tony” Lewis, in 1961. Each of the other schools in the system also began admitting Black students while many Virginia schools, public and private, continued to resist racial integration.
In 1975, St. Anne’s merged with the Belfield School in Charlottesville but retained associate status within CSDV. In 1987, St. Anne’s-Belfield School was allowed by the Trustees of Church Schools to become completely independent of CSDV.
The two schools in Alexandria would merge, as well, becoming St. Stephen’s and St. Agnes School in 1991.
The newest addition to the CSDV system is Stuart Hall School in Staunton, acquired in 2003 to continue an educational history dating back to its founding in 1844. Stuart Hall is the oldest preparatory school for girls in Virginia and became fully coed in 2014.
Today, Church Schools in the Diocese of Virginia owns six schools, stretching from the Rappahannock River to the Shenandoah Valley, from the Old Dominion’s capital to the nation’s capital. What remains unchanged over its century of operation is a commitment to preparing young people for success in life, in college, and in service to others.