Augusta GA schools:
the districts, explained for newcomers

Three public school districts cover the metro, split by the Savannah River and the state line. Richmond County School System (RCSS) covers the Georgia side's core: Augusta, Hephzibah, and Blythe. Columbia County School District (CCSD) covers the Georgia suburbs: Grovetown, Evans, Martinez, Harlem, and Appling. Aiken County Public School District (ACPSD) covers the South Carolina side: North Augusta, Aiken, and the rest of Aiken County.

Your address decides your district, not the town name on your mailbox. Parts of metro Augusta share ZIP codes across county lines, so confirm every specific address with the district. Georgia's two districts run under Georgia Department of Education rules, including Georgia's school transfer law. Aiken County runs under South Carolina Department of Education rules. The rulebooks do not cross the river.

Do not compare those two graduation rates head to head and declare a winner. Different states, different student populations, different everything. They are here so you know each district's official number, not so you can rank them.

RCSS is the big-city district: it covers all of Richmond County, which means Augusta proper plus Hephzibah and Blythe. If your address is inside the county, this is your district, including the families living on Fort Gordon (more on post in section 8).

Choice inside the district. RCSS runs its school choice program at rcboe.org/choice, and it draws a clear line between two things. Magnet schools take students districtwide instead of by zone and require an application plus criteria. Specialized programs live inside comprehensive schools, can also draw districtwide, and use the same application. The four magnets, in the district's own words:

• Richmond County Technical Career Magnet School (grades 6-12, computer science and technology)
• Davidson Fine Arts Magnet School (fine arts and academics)
• C.T. Walker Traditional Magnet School (K-5, communication and academic excellence)
• A.R. Johnson Health Science and Engineering Magnet School (grades 6-12, STEAM)

Applications for the 2027-28 school year begin November 1, 2026.

Transfers between zoned schools. Georgia's HB 251 gives parents the right to request a transfer to another school in the same district when space allows, and RCSS publishes how it applies here. The standard window runs November 1 through May 1 each year (an extra window for 2026-27 ran July 1 through August 14, 2026). Schools above 80% enrollment capacity are not eligible for out-of-zone transfers, and newly opened schools sit out school choice for four years. Two practical notes from the district's own pages: parents are responsible for checking possible GHSA varsity eligibility effects for athletes, and HB 224 gives military families a separate transfer path within the system that contains the base or off-base military housing, subject to space.

The Augusta guide and the Augusta neighborhoods page both get into how school zoning plays out across the city's neighborhoods.

CCSD covers all of Columbia County: Evans, Martinez, Grovetown, Harlem, and Appling. This is the district families in the area ask for by name, and the class-of-2025 graduation rate on the district's own homepage is 92.96%.

What is verified about programs. CCSD's official site confirms three things and stays quiet on the rest. The site navigation includes an IB Diploma Programme page (which school hosts it is not verified on the official site). Columbia Virtual Academy is the district's online school. The high school course catalog lists career and technical (CTAE) pathways, including engineering and technology, law enforcement and forensic science, and marketing, offered across the comprehensive high schools. What is not verified: a dedicated official magnet-school list for CCSD. This page does not invent one.

Zoning. Like everywhere in the CSRA, zoning is by exact address. CCSD's published guidance and every town guide on this site say the same thing: confirm with the district, not with a listing agent. The town guides for Grovetown, Evans, Martinez, and Harlem each name the local feeder pattern as currently published.

ACPSD covers all of Aiken County, South Carolina, which includes North Augusta and Aiken. The big structural difference from the Georgia districts: Aiken County runs a modified year-round calendar, so the 2026-27 school year started Monday, July 20, 2026, weeks before the Georgia districts. If you are moving from Georgia to South Carolina mid-summer, your kids start earlier than you expect. Plan for it.

Choice inside the district. Aiken County runs partial magnet schools, and the district's own description is the useful part: any student in Aiken County can apply to attend. The three named in the district's article:

• Jackson STEM Magnet Middle School
• New Ellenton Middle STEAM Magnet School
• East Aiken School of the Arts

Current application windows and criteria were not verified on the district's current pages, so check acpsd.net for this year's process rather than relying on older articles.

Zone lookup. ACPSD's official school-zone lookup runs through My Ride K-12, linked from the district's School Zone Locator page (acpsd.net/o/owes/page/school-zone-locator/). Put in the home address and it returns the zoned schools. The exact external My Ride K-12 destination link was not verified, so start from the district's page.

Step back from the district-by-district details and the pattern is simple. Every district zones by home address first. Then each one offers doors out of the zone: magnets and specialized programs by application, and transfer rights under state law. The doors differ by district and by state, and they all have capacity limits and application windows. Nothing here is automatic, and none of it works retroactively after you have signed a lease counting on a specific school.

If you are comparing the two sides of the river, the state-law layer is the real difference. Georgia's HB 251 transfer right is a Georgia thing; South Carolina has its own framework. That is one more reason the where-to-live guide tells you to pick a side of the river before you compare towns.

One thing this page will not do: tell you which magnet is best, or whether magnets beat zoned schools. The programs are described in the districts' own words above. What fits your kid is a question for the district's choice office, not a newsletter.

Do this before you sign anything. School zones follow addresses, not town names, not ZIP codes, and not what the listing agent told you.

1. Get the exact street address of the place you are considering.
2. In Aiken County, use the district's School Zone Locator page on acpsd.net, which points to My Ride K-12.
3. In Richmond or Columbia County, contact the district directly. Neither district's official address-based lookup URL was verified for this page, so call or use the contact form on rcboe.org or ccboe.net rather than trusting a third-party site.
4. Ask specifically about the elementary, middle, and high school for that address. Feeder patterns are not always town-wide.

Third-party school sites will happily tell you a school's rating. They are not the district, and their zones are not official. Use them for color if you want; use the district for the answer that counts.

Here is the fact that surprises most military families: there is no DoDEA school at Fort Gordon. DoDEA's Americas listings cover Fort Bragg, Fort Campbell, Fort Knox, Fort Benning, Fort Stewart, Fort Jackson, Fort Rucker, and others. Fort Gordon is not among them.

What is on post: Freedom Park, a public K-8 school in the Richmond County School System, located on Fort Gordon and serving post families (about 600 students, per the school's profile). Its own site states it plainly: not a DOD school, a public school in the Richmond County district. Beyond K-8, students from on-post families attend Richmond County schools, and the HB 224 military-family transfer path in section 3 applies.

The Fort Gordon guide covers the rest of the PCS picture: gates, housing, healthcare, and daily life. Its schools section points here for the district mechanics.

The CSRA has a real private-school sector, and newcomers ask about it constantly. This page lists the verified schools by existence and town only, confirmed on each school's own website on September 27, 2026. No tuition figures (not officially published in a comparable way), no rankings, no recommendations.

Augusta, GA: Westminster Schools of Augusta, Aquinas High School, Episcopal Day School, St. Mary on the Hill Catholic School, Curtis Baptist School.

Martinez, GA: Augusta Christian Schools (its own site places it in Martinez, not Augusta).

North Augusta, SC: Victory Christian School.

Aiken, SC: Mead Hall Episcopal School.

If private school is on your list, visit, ask about admissions timelines (they do not follow the district calendars in section 2), and price it against the full cost of the move. Georgia and South Carolina each have their own education tax-credit and scholarship programs; those change often enough that you should check the current state rules rather than relying on anything written here.