Providence Day School

On September 28, 1970, 112 students and five teachers gathered in a converted house on a former horse pasture at the intersection of Sardis and Rama Roads, near the Olde Providence neighborhood.

The parents who gathered throughout 1970 to create Providence Day —amid busing that had begun in the 1969-70 school year—said publicly that the busing was their motivation, and they wished to preserve a neighborhood school and avoid the disruptions that long bus rides brought to their children. They were part of a trend, both locally and nationally, of independent schools founded during this era.

Almost from the beginning, the school adopted a bedrock philosophy of service to its community, later described as social responsibility in the school’s mission statement. The determination from its earliest days to nurture connections to the larger world around it helped the school grow to become the most diverse major independent school in Charlotte. Providence Day in 2020 counted more than seventy countries of origin among its student body, and more than 30 percent of students who are Black, indigenous, or people of color, along with 22 percent of the faculty.