One of the major advantages of independent schools is in our name: we operate independently. Independent schools are organic to the community, and they offer families new options. Independent schools combine high academic standards with a strong sense of community. Our students help design their own academic paths on a daily basis. Our teachers come to ISW with the full understanding that their jobs entail much more than what goes on in the classroom. Our teachers are academic advisers, student organization liaisons, and coaches. Your child will be known!

A truly great independent school becomes an integral player in the community; it finds ways to admit and to support a diverse student body and faculty; it becomes a resource to the entire community. ISW offers the larger community many opportunities–particularly our highly successful and well-known performing arts programs Huzzah and Young Actors Academy.

Parents who opt for independent schools do so because they feel strongly about mission. We believe ISW’s mission, “to create a learning environment where young people discover and develop their own unique abilities to think logically and critically, to effect positive change in the world, and to approach life with an open heart,” is compelling.

ISW is fully accredited by the Virginia Independent Schools Association.

Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire.

William Butler Yeats