Jacksonville Beach Elementary School - Jacksonville Beach, FL

For the past twenty years, the Jacksonville Beach Elementary (JBE) school community has earned recognition as the highest performing elementary school within Duval County Public Schools and one of the top achieving elementary schools in the State of Florida. Despite the recent global pandemic, JBE increased total school grade points earned and remained in the top three of all elementary schools in the State for all tested grade levels and subject areas.

A recent point of pride for our school community was becoming a Nationally Certified Magnet School (Demonstration Level) through Magnet Schools of America in Spring 2021. Based on a rigorous evaluation of supporting artifacts, JBE was recognized as showing excellence in promoting school diversity, closing the achievement gap, integrating a theme-based curriculum throughout the school, and encouraging parent and community involvement.

JBE consistently embraces a "whole child" educational approach and implements strategies and innovative programs to facilitate the growth of students' academic, social/emotional, and cultural knowledge. Equal emphasis is placed on the integration of gifted curriculum/programming within daily classroom instruction and active promotion of cultural understanding and social acceptance of others. At JBE, students are inspired to become intrinsically motivated, self-starters, and independent learners. Schoo-lwide initiatives, such as the Growth Mindset, Student-Led Conferences, Genius Hour research projects, Project-Based Learning, and Choice Boards, inspire students to seek out and appreciate academic challenge and risk. A positive and active partnership between all stakeholders has resulted in all subgroups of students finding high levels of academic achievement and learning gains.