Mount de Sales Academy

Mount de Sales Academy is an independent, Catholic, college preparatory school in Macon, Georgia, United States. It was founded in 1876 by five Sisters of Mercy as a boarding school for girls. In 1959, it became coeducational and closed boarding school operations four years later. The Sisters served in an administrative capacity until 2002, when the first lay head of school was selected by the Mount de Sales Academy Board of Trustees. The school is governed by its trustees and continues to be sponsored by the Sisters of Mercy. It is part of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Savannah.Mount de Sales, commonly referred to as MDS, is the oldest school in Macon. For more than 140 years, the school has remained at its original location atop Beall's Hill, the former home of Georgia Governor George W. Towns (1801—1854), in downtown Macon, overlooking the antebellum city. In 1963, it became the first school in Middle Georgia to desegregate.While it has a Catholic heritage, the school attracts students of all faiths and hosts dozens of international exchange students. Upwards of 600 students in grades 6-12 are enrolled in the upper and middle schools. Approximately one-third of the student body is from ethnically diverse populations. The athletic teams, as well as academic, literary, debate and thespian clubs, are nicknamed Cavaliers and compete in the Georgia High School Association.HistoryEarly historyIn 1871, a group of five Sisters of Mercy from Columbus, Georgia, began a small school known as the Academy of the Sacred Heart Jesus on the corner of Fourth and Walnut streets in Macon. The school taught students of a variety of faiths, and along with a free school that was operated out of the basement of the old St. Joseph Catholic Church, predated the Bibb County public school system by nearly a year. The free school became one of the area's first public schools in 1872.