4842 HEADLEY Terrace
Jacksonville, FL 32205

My son went to Ruth Upson from VPK 2016 till 5th grade 2023 and we could not have asked for a better experience! We have loved ALL of his amazing teachers and staff. They were the ones who realized he needed to be in gifted and helped guide , support and nurture him into being well rounded in all of his studies so much he made it into James Weldon Johnson College Prep JH. I am very proud to have been a Ruth Upson parent.

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.

This is the worst school ever. I do NOT RECOMMEND YOUR CHILDREN GOING HERE.