Commonwealth Governor's School


The Commonwealth Governor's School is one of 18 magnet Governor's Schools in Virginia. The Commonwealth Governor's School is a half-day program for gifted and highly motivated students based on a school-within-a-school model. Admissions are competitive and students are selected from Stafford, Spotsylvania, Caroline, and King George counties. Students may attend CGS grades 9 through 12.

Program structure

Enrolled students take all of their core academic classes at one of the six Governor's School sites. Students who are not based at a school with a CGS site are bused to a site for these core courses. However, they are considered students of their neighborhood high schools where they take their elective courses. Ultimately, students graduate from their "base" school with special recognition for completing the Governor's School program.
The curriculum is specifically integrated within core classes and involves tele-broadcasting technology between Commonwealth Governor's School sites.
Sylvia Wadsworth was the first director of the Commonwealth Governor's School, retiring from that position in 2005. Dr. David Baker took over the post after her departure. On May 19, 2010, Merri Kae VanderPloeg was named the new director until the 2018-2019 school year, where Jennifer Grigsby became the new director.

The culminating project

"Culminating" is a two-year-long research project with two phases, repeated twice over the CGS career. The first phase is the research phase. This requires that the researcher finds sources, evaluates them, and arranges them in a final literature review. The second phase is the product phase, where the researcher integrates the knowledge they learned from their research the previous year to create a project that solves a current problem or displays the depth of their research in full.