Best Catholic Elementary School in Jacksonville? (St. Augustine, Jay: to rent, houses, neighborhoods)

[Jayhawk123]

I may be moving to Jacksonville (fingers crossed) in the next month or so and was hoping someone could recommend a good Catholic school. My daughter will be going into 3rd grade. I appreciate any advice- thanks!

[Floridian]

The one I know of is St. Joseph's on Old St. Augustine Rd (in Mandarin Area). We are catholics but my daughters attend public school and just take the catechism lessons at St. Josephs.

[dizliz0925]

We are not Catholics (I am Jewish, my wife is non-denominational Christian) and if we were staying in Jax, we would be sending our kids to Catholic School (we are moving to VA in 3 weeks).

What side of town are you thinking of living?

The Catholic Schools in Jax are all very good.
Mandarin/Southside, St. Joseph's
San Marco, Assumption
Riverside/Avondale, St Pauls
Northside, St Patricks

They all feed to Bishop Kenny High School (There is also Bishop Snyder HS on the Westside, but I don't know too much about that).

[remember-voltaire]

all the catholic schools are just as good as each other from what I've heard off others.
so in essence it doesn't matter which school you send them to as they'll receive a good education


actually just been thinking of it I've never heard of one bad catholic/ christian school.



Maybe Riv could help you out more as she's a great source on all things JAX



all the best

[riveree]

All sounds like good advice above. My understanding is that they are all good as well.

There's also:

San Jose Catholic

San Jose Episcopal

St. Mark's Episcopal

In a recent thread, Noland menioned that he attended St. Paul's By-The-Sea out at Jax Beach and he highly recommended it (the location might not be ideal unless you live near the beach though.....most of the others are on or near San Jose Blvd).

[Jayhawk123]

Thank you all for your help. If I get the job I am hoping for I will we working in the San Marco area (I think that is what it's called) but I have 2 kids so we were thinking we'd probably live in one of the suburbs. I'm open to any advice on where to move. I was doing an internet search trying to find out about the area and kept coming across this site. I've been trying to read a lot of the posts on where to move, etc. and I am really impressed about how nice and helpful everyone is on this site. It makes me feel a lot better about moving there.

dizliz0925- where in VA are you moving? I lived there for 5 years and just moved to MD last year.

[riveree]

Originally Posted by Jayhawk123

Thank you all for your help. If I get the job I am hoping for I will we working in the San Marco area (I think that is what it's called) but I have 2 kids so we were thinking we'd probably live in one of the suburbs. I'm open to any advice on where to move.

San Marco is, technically, suburban, but it has an urban feel. It's predominantly single family homes (and cute ones at that ). The homes run towards being small and expensive. Check out zip 32207 online to see what I mean. The prices are high for a reason, it's a great location, so if it works for your budget, I'd consider it.

There are a lot of good choices in Jax for housing. It depends on your budget, your priorities and the type of housing and neighborhood you envision.

Since this thread has a heading about schools, you might want to start a seperate thread about neighborhoods and post some specifics about what you're looking for - you'll probably end up with more focused feedback that way......just a thought .

[PinoyDoc]

Originally Posted by Jayhawk123

Thank you all for your help. If I get the job I am hoping for I will we working in the San Marco area (I think that is what it's called) but I have 2 kids so we were thinking we'd probably live in one of the suburbs. I'm open to any advice on where to move. I was doing an internet search trying to find out about the area and kept coming across this site. I've been trying to read a lot of the posts on where to move, etc. and I am really impressed about how nice and helpful everyone is on this site. It makes me feel a lot better about moving there.

hello there!
I live in San Marco, and work downtown. My commute from home to work is 2 miles and under 10 minutes. The houses are older and smaller (ours was built in 1940 and is under 2000 square feet).

We go to Assumption Catholic Church, which is in the same zip code as our house, but is technically part of the St. Nicolas part of Jax. My eldest daughter just started kindergarten at Assumption, which I believe is the oldest Catholic School in town. We have been happy, but of course we have many years to go before we experience all levels.

Good Luck!

[mocando]

If you are still looking, St. Paul's Riverside has been turning out quite a few valedictorians at Bishop Kenny. I attended San Jose Catholic and felt I got a good education. I ended up taking all honors at Kenny and finished there with close to a 4.0.

You could check with the diocese school office and ask for some stats on which schools are turning out the students with the best grades, which ones have the least amount of disciplinary problems, etc. Hope this helps.

[Jayhawk123]

Thank you everyone for your advice. I did get the job offer I was hoping for so we'll be moving down there in a month or so. Thanks to all the great advice on this forum I feel much more prepared. It looks like we'll have to rent for a while because the market is so bad right now we have had our house on the market for over a month and only one person came to see it and that was during an open house! Anyway, this thread is about Catholic Schools, so back on point- if anyone else has any info on the schools, please let me know. Thanks!