Garrison Forest School (GFS) received a $5 million gift to support several ongoing and future projects, including a full renovation of the main Upper School building and the construction of a new dormitory, both of which are slated for completion this summer. Gifted by an anonymous alumna donor, the donation represents the largest single philanthropic gift in the independent school’s 109-year history.
“The renovation of the Elinor Purves McLennan Library, the construction of the new dormitory and the complete renovation of the Upper School’s main building are projects designed to serve our students by making sure that our facilities match the high quality of our academic, residential and extracurricular programs,” said Head of School Chris Hughes.
Two years ago, a student told Garrison Forest Upper School art teacher Sarah Sachs about an Adirondack chair her brother made in a woodworking class at an area boys’ school. “I started looking into it and all of the boys’ schools had woodshops,” said Ms. Sachs. Yet, in her research, none of the area girls’ schools taught woodworking. This drove Ms. Sachs to begin her journey toward creating a woodworking class at Garrison Forest, which wrapped up its inaugural semester in January. She began by visiting one school, which has a woodworking department in each division, to start gathering ideas and learning more about the tools the students would need to get started. She was excited to realize that the GFS sculpture studio already had most of the required tools and she was able to purchase the remaining tools needed in order to launch the course. 
This fall marked the beginning of a first for GFS—and Maryland—as Garrison Forest added a mountain biking team to its list of Upper School fall sports. GFS joined the Maryland Interscholastic Cycling league, which is in its first year in the state, as the only girls’ school in Maryland to participate. The Maryland Interscholastic Cycling League was organized in 2017 to provide a fun, safe and high-quality mountain biking program for students in grades 6 to 12.
For years, Garrison Forest School has joined many other schools across the nation in holding a “signing day” to celebrate athletes signing letters of intent to attend and play Division 1 college sports. On Tuesday, May 8, GFS recognized the school’s five students bound for art colleges with an inaugural Arts Signing Day.
