Country Day Expands Guanacaste Campus

The CountryDay School, one of Costa Rica’s several private schools based on the U.S. education system, has begun expanding its Guanacaste campus, hoping to bump enrollment from 175 to 360 in the next few years.

The northern-Pacific Guanacaste branch started in 2000, meeting in a local hotel, said director Patrick Brown. In 2003 the school moved to a 14-hectare plot near the beach at Brasilito, about 75 kilometers south of the Nicaraguan border.

The school is an offshoot of the CountryDay School in the western San José suburb of Escazú, which began in 1963 and now has 800 students in elementary, middle and high school programs.

Classes are in English, and graduates of both branches should be prepared for university in either Costa Rica or North America, according to the school’s Web site.

Despite its name, Country Day School Guanacaste is one of Central America’s only schools with a boarding option, Brown said. Though most students go home at night, approximately 15 stay either Monday through Friday or for the entire school year. Some come for 10 weeks from ProctorAcademy, a boarding school in the U.S. state of New Hampshire, Brown said.

The new construction will add 16 classrooms, a multipurpose hall, an art studio and some offices to its current holdings of classrooms, dorms, gymnasium, swimming pool and library. Tuition at Country Day School Guanacaste is $7,040 for day students, $14,980 for five-day boarders and $23,230 for year-long boarders, Brown said.