8034 Tessa Ter E
Jacksonville, FL 32244

A very sweet school with a wonderful magnet program

It's really a heartbreak to send your kid to this place -- this is what we experienced in the one year we attended: numerous fights; bathrooms often closed; movement in the building so restricted during lunch that some kids couldn't really always get lunch; security guards made kids shake out their binders onto the floor in the hallway; an English teacher showed a highly inaccurate movie inspired by Beowulf instead of having kids read it (and the teacher oblivious that the film is way off); another teacher told kids that hurricanes in the Americas are created by the souls of enslaved people; my son would send me cell phone videos during class of multiple students just sleeping on their desks while the teacher was doing nothing. This place extinguished my son's interest in school. The name is being changed (which is great), but I hope the rest of the place can be improved for the general students. At the open house, all the principal talked about were the special tracks like early high school and the engineering program, which might not be so bad -- but what about the majority of the kids? We discovered that few of the more appealing course offerings were actually available.

I don’t know what is wrong with this school! It was horrible I mean hooooorrrribleeee! The students disrespectful and ghetto. Teacher rude, disrespectful and always thinking they the parents of the child. Don’t get me started on the deans and principals. Mr. Erico don’t act like no damn principle. Deans and assistants principle act like they don’t want this job neither. They wouldn’t let me into school multiple times just because I had crocs on. Which is ridiculous! They are more worried about dress code than education. I would not recommend sending your child to Westside middle school in Jacksonville Florida.