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As the father of a family about to move to the Spartanburg area, I read this site daily. I have seen many mentions of public school districts, but no mention of the Spartanburg Day School. What is the local reputation of that school? I realize that it is pricey, so no need to go into that.
Exceptionally strong academics. Mandatory intramural athetic activity for students (while public schools mainly focus on their try-out teams/spectator sports). Reputation seen by some as an "elite" school for families with money (but isn't that the rep for lots of private schools).
There are outstanding public schools in many of the Spartanburg County public school districts with courses for advanced/gifted kids, but of course there are other kids in those schools from all walks of life and at different skill levels. If a parent has the money, has kids who are on the gifted end academically, and want them to be in a homogeneous environment, then it's a good fit.
I think you have been misled in some aspects of your post. I wouldn't call the school just a school for the wealthy. About 1/3 of students at the Spartanburg Day School are on some sort of financial aid. About 1/3 are considered to make "sacrifices" to send their children to SDS. Only about 1/3 of the students there are actually wealthy enough to really be able to afford the tuition.
In my opinion, it also isn't an incredibly homogeneous environment. SDS has diversity in many ways outside of race. For example, the school has focused on its international aspects in more recent years. There are many foreign exchange students in the upper school. There have been students from Brazil, China, South Korea, Germany, and a few other countries. The majority of these students stay for 2-3 years and become an integral part of the SDS family. That's diversity in itself. There's quite a diversity in student beliefs as well. I can think of students who are Christian, Atheist, Agnostic, Buddhist, Muslim, and Jewish off of the top of my head.
The mandatory athletics are interscholastic. There aren't any intramural sports. (Every so often there will be. There was Club Volleyball a couple of years ago in order to introduce Volleyball in the fall as an interscholastic sport.) PE is offered K-6 and then students must play at least one team sport each year from 7th-12th grades. The school did allow students who weren't into sports to do Physical Conditioning instead, but they phased that out this year, so all students must participate in at least one team sport per year. The school was in the North Carolina conference, but this year they are switching to the South Carolina conference, which should be beneficial in many ways. That being said, there are no cuts at SDS and your child will be able to participate in any sport that he or she would like regardless of experience. The school may be small, but it fields teams in almost as many sports as public schools. The one exception would probably be football. Basketball makes up for that though.
The academics are extremely strong in my opinion. I know that at the elementary school level, students at SDS are about a year ahead of their peers in public school. It seems to mostly even out by about the eighth or ninth grade though. At least, this was the case 5-10 years ago. They have since implemented the IB program in the lower school, so I'm not sure how much that has changed.
The coursework is rigorous. Only three seniors this year made All-A Honor Roll, but if you look at the colleges that seniors are going to, you will see that the majority are going to very strong schools, if not all of them. (This is subjective of course.)
SDS has 100% of its students take the SAT and it has an average score above National, State, and District standards. I think they have the highest SAT scores in Spartanburg County, though I'm not one hundred percent sure about that.
I, of course, am biased towards the school, but I've spent time with both Spartanburg County public schools and SDS, and I would definitely say that SDS gave the better education. There were simply more opportunities available there and a stronger curriculum in my opinion.
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