Campus and Community
Our Campus
MCDS is located in Corte Madera, about 10 miles from the San Francisco side of the Golden Gate Bridge, on 35 naturally beautiful acres which begin at the Bay and run up the hills of Ring Mountain, where the school property adjoins the Marin County Open Space District.
With a collection of attractive frame buildings that fit naturally into their setting, the MCDS campus is designed to invite full interaction with the outdoors through open-air spaces for experiential learning, student gardens, athletic fields, attractive and functionally designed playgrounds and a marine studies dock.
The campus is divided into two divisions: Lower and Upper (grades K-4 and 5-8, respectively), each with its own identity within the whole. In addition to classrooms, facilities include science laboratories, separate facilities for music and art, a performing arts auditorium, gardens, gymnasium, library and technology facilities, two multipurpose rooms and offices.
Our Community
MCDS is an inclusive community of warmth and friendliness, guided by the core values of respect, responsibility and compassion, which govern all interactions between children and adults alike. As our founders envisioned, our school community is dedicated to helping children become excellent learners and thoughtful and purposeful participants in their world.
From its inception, MCDS has attracted from San Francisco and Marin a diverse group of families of extraordinary commitment and generosity of spirit. In choosing Marin Country Day School for their children, each generation of parents has enthusiastically endorsed the school’s philosophy and its mission, and has assumed its share of responsibility for MCDS’s present and future well-being. MCDS could not be what it is today without its shared value system and the selfless contributions of parents, who give their time and expertise as volunteers and who share their financial resources to support the school’s goals and aspirations. This commitment and dedication provide an indescribable and invaluable resource for children.
Our Extended Community
The school’s mission challenges us to help our students envision and work toward a better world. MCDS seeks to strengthen community connections throughout all grade levels, expanding current partnerships and establishing new relationships with other schools, public service organizations, museums and other cultural institutions. A comprehensive service learning program complements discrete community service projects such as food drives or eighth graders volunteering for a week in various Marin and San Francisco agencies. Service learning provides children a curricular context in which to identify social concerns (e.g., “hunger”), consider ways to address the problem and develop responses in which they can be active participants.
As we strive to equip students to envision and work toward a better world, we recognize that we have much to learn as well as much to offer. New curricular initiatives include providing students opportunities to network and problem-solve across international boundaries in areas of common interest.
