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Duval County Public Schools

This guide is for a buyer or renter whose house would sit in Duval County and whose children would use Duval County Public Schools. That is the consolidated City of Jacksonville, and it is also Atlantic Beach, Neptune Beach, Jacksonville Beach, and Baldwin. Those beach towns and Baldwin have their own city halls. Their public schools are still this district. Clay, St. Johns, and Nassau are different districts with different rules, even when the commute into Jacksonville is short and the mailing address sounds local.

Military Realty of Florida wrote this for permanent change of station orders, not as a ranking site. The three gates that drive most of these house hunts are NAS Jacksonville on the west bank of the St. Johns, Naval Station Mayport just north of the beach towns, and Blount Island on the north side of the river near the port. The school question is separate from the gate question. A short drive to the ship or the flight line does not assign a campus. The street address does, unless a choice placement says otherwise.

Read this with two official pages open. The district home is dcps.duvalschools.org. The address tool is My School Location. Everything below explains how to use those pages, what the latest published enrollment and grade releases actually say, and how a military family should sequence the house, the zone, the bus, and the orders. It does not list every campus, and it does not grade a house.

On this page

Who this is for

Use this page if the house you are about to tour, rent, or write an offer on is inside Duval County. The orders can be to any of the three Navy gates, or the sponsor can already be here and the family is catching up, or you are a retiree buying while a dependent is still in school. The district does not care which gate signs the orders. It cares which address the student will use as home, and then it cares whether you apply for something other than that address-assigned seat.

It is also for the buyer who has been told "it is all Jacksonville." It is not. Orange Park, Fleming Island, Middleburg, Oakleaf, and Green Cove Springs are Clay County. Ponte Vedra, Nocatee, Fruit Cove, Julington, and most of what people call the southern suburbs past the Duval line are St. Johns County. Yulee, Callahan, and Fernandina Beach are Nassau County. A house can sit a short drive from a Duval neighborhood and belong to a different school board. If the county on the tax record is not Duval, stop and use that county's guide. Running this district's locator on a Clay or St. Johns address will not give you a trustworthy answer.

Beach buyers need the same caution in the other direction. Atlantic Beach, Neptune Beach, and Jacksonville Beach feel like their own towns because they are. Police, city hall, and some local rules are municipal. Public school assignment is not. A child who lives in one of those three cities is a Duval County Public Schools student unless the family chooses a different legal path, such as a private school or home education, which this page does not cover. Baldwin, far west near the county line along the interstate, is the same story. Small town government, Duval public schools. The locator still has to be run on the Baldwin address. Living in Duval is not the same thing as living near a particular campus.

Renters should use this page the same way buyers do. A one-year lease does not create a special zone, and it does not freeze a magnet seat to the apartment. The primary address on the lease is what you type into the locator. If you rent on the Westside for a year while you learn the air station, then buy at the beaches, you have changed districts only if you crossed a county line. If you stayed in Duval, you changed zones. The new address is a new lookup. Do not assume the school that worked for the rental follows the family to the house you buy later.

This page is for the family that can live with the zoned school. That sentence is the whole housing strategy. Duval is a choice district, and a DCPS enrollment article says students always have a seat at the neighborhood zoned school. The same article says families can apply to other schools if space exists. Space is not a promise you can attach to a contract. If the only reason a house works is a magnet or a special assignment you do not have yet, the house does not work yet. Buy or rent the address whose zoned seat you can accept, and treat any other campus as something you apply for after that.

It is also for families with more than one child, including children who will not land in the same kind of program. One child may be a fit for a magnet application. Another may need the neighborhood school, or a self-contained exceptional-student class, or simply a seat that starts on time. The district's bus page says self-contained ESE students must also register for the bus. That is a registration fact, not a description of services. Ask the zoned school what it can provide for your child. Do not assume a program you had at the last duty station exists on the street you like in Arlington or Mandarin.

Dual-military households and geo-bachelor setups should read the address section twice. The compact can help you start paperwork before you have keys. It does not let two different houses count as the zone at the same time. If one parent is in lodging at NAS Jacksonville and the other is already in a rental in Mandarin, those are two addresses. The school will tell you which one it will treat as primary. Get that answer before you promise a child a campus. The same is true after a divorce or a split household. There is no custody formula on this page. The district uses an address. You need to know which one they will take.

You do not need this page to pick a "best side of town." You need it to stop three expensive mistakes. The first is writing an offer because a listing remark named a high school. The second is treating a district letter grade as the grade of the campus on that block. The third is planning a Mayport life and an air-station commute as if they were the same drive. The sections below separate those checks. The house search itself sits on a different page: Duval County homes. Campus-by-campus listing search, which is not this guide, is at search homes by campus.

If you want a person to walk an address with you, call or text Military Realty of Florida at (904) 309-0609. We will not guess a zone over the phone from a neighborhood nickname. Have the street address ready, or be ready to hear that we need to look it up the same way you would, on the district tool.

Enrollment

The enrollment figure to use is the one Duval Times published on Aug. 28, 2026, citing the Florida Department of Education. Duval County Public Schools enrolled 130,054 students in 2024-25, up 0.7% from the prior year. That is a 2024-25 count. It is not a 2026-27 count, and it is not a live census of the year you are shopping. A family reading this after the fall of 2026 should not add a year of growth in their head. The paper did not publish a 2026-27 headcount in that story, and this page does not add one.

Read the 0.7% as a district-wide change from the year before 2024-25, not as a description of crowding at one campus. Duval Times attributed the figure to the Florida Department of Education. A district can grow by less than one percent and still have a single school that feels full, or a single school that has room. The number does not tell you whether the elementary school on a particular Mandarin street has a seat in the grade you need beyond the district's basic promise, discussed later, that a student has a seat at the neighborhood zoned school. Seat at the zoned school and "class size feels comfortable" are different sentences. Class size is a question for the school, not a number on this page.

The same Duval Times story listed 2024-25 enrollment for these high schools. The figures below are from that story, still for 2024-25, not for 2026-27.

School named by Duval Times 2024-25 enrollment
Atlantic Coast 2,887
Sandalwood 2,627
Mandarin 2,343
Duncan U. Fletcher 2,184
First Coast 2,098
Englewood 1,896
Edward H. White 1,663
Riverside 1,638

Florida Cyber Charter Academy at 1,677 was in that same Duval Times table. The name says charter. Do not read that row as the neighborhood high school for a house. A charter is a choice you make. The address-assigned high school is whatever My School Location returns for your street. The table is a size snapshot of names the paper published. It is not a directory of every high school in the district, and it is not a quality ranking. A larger reported enrollment is not a better school. It is only a larger reported enrollment in 2024-25.

A DCPS enrollment article, separate from the Duval Times story, said more than 140 traditional public schools were listed for a 2025 School Enrollment Expo. That phrase is about the size of the menu at that expo, not about the 130,054 student count, and not about how many schools exist this week. Use it as a warning against assuming you already know the options. A district that can put more than 140 traditional public schools on an expo list is not a district you can memorize from a group chat. The article is here: DCPS enrollment article.

2026 grades

Two published sources describe the 2026 school-grade release. They are not the same table, and neither one is a grade for the house you are standing in. Use them to understand the district picture. Then look up the campus.

The Florida Department of Education 2026 school-grade packet reports Duval's share of school grades as A 37%, B 22%, C 38%, D 3%, and F 0%. The packet is SchoolGradesResultsPacket26.pdf. Those are shares of graded schools. They are not a promise about one house, one block, or one student. A buyer who hears "almost nobody got an F" has heard a real packet result, the F share at 0%, and has still not learned the letter on the campus the locator will name.

News4Jax, on July 1, 2026, reporting that Department of Education release, said Duval's district grade was A. The same story reported 134 district schools and 39 charters, which it totaled as 173, and letter counts of A 64, B 37, and C 64. The story is the News4Jax report. Do not subtract those letter counts from 173 to manufacture a D count or an ungraded count. The packet already states the D share and the F share of graded schools. The news story stated the A, B, and C counts it stated. Leave the two publications side by side.

What was published Figure Source
Share of graded schools, A 37% DOE 2026 school-grade packet
Share of graded schools, B 22% DOE 2026 school-grade packet
Share of graded schools, C 38% DOE 2026 school-grade packet
Share of graded schools, D 3% DOE 2026 school-grade packet
Share of graded schools, F 0% DOE 2026 school-grade packet
District grade A News4Jax, July 1, 2026, reporting the DOE release
District schools and charters 134 district schools and 39 charters (173) News4Jax, July 1, 2026
Letter counts A 64, B 37, C 64 News4Jax, July 1, 2026

The campus grade, the only letter that belongs to a specific school, is on the Florida Department of Education report card site: edudata.fldoe.org/ReportCards/Schools.html. Open it after the locator has given you a name. Search that name. Read that card. Do not average it with the district grade of A and call the result your house. Do not assume a charter's grade is the grade of the neighborhood school next door. News4Jax counted 39 charters inside the 173. A charter grade is about that charter. Your child is not assigned there by the deed.

How an address becomes a school

The district's rule, stated on the locator page, is that the address sets the zone unless the student is in Choice. The tool is My School Location. You type the street address the student will actually live at. The result is the neighborhood assignment. Everything else in a house hunt is a comment on that result, not a replacement for it.

Use the address that will be the primary residence. That is the house you are buying or the apartment you are leasing, not the hotel, not base lodging, not the sponsor's buddy's spare room, and not the address on the orders unless the family will live there. Orders can get an enrollment conversation started. They do not replace the street. If you are still choosing between three houses, run all three. Do not run your favorite and assume the other two on the same road match. In this district, "same neighborhood" is a real estate phrase. The zone is an address phrase.

Include the unit when the place has a unit. A complex can be a single assignment, or the district's file can care about the full address string. You will not know which until the tool accepts the address you will put on the enrollment form. For a house, use the address the property appraiser and the contract use, including the directional and the street type. "Terrace" and "Road" are not the same lookup. A corner lot can face two streets and still have one legal address. Look the house up under that legal address, not under the side you parked on.

New construction is where buyers get sloppy. A model home has an address. Your lot may have a different one, or the locator may not recognize the lot yet. Do not borrow the model's school and write it into the offer as if it were yours. If the tool fails, call the district and ask them to identify the address, then ask the zoned school to confirm. A developer map with a school name in the corner is advertising. The locator is the assignment method the district publishes. Until the address is recognized, you do not have a confirmed zone, and you should treat that as an open question in the offer, not as a detail for later.

The previous owner's child is not evidence. Magnet students, choice students, and older siblings who stayed after a move can make a house "feel" like it belongs to a campus the new buyer will not get. Listing remarks often repeat whatever the seller remembers. Agents repeat the remarks. None of that changes the rule on the locator page. If the remarks and the tool disagree, the tool wins, and a call to the school named by the tool is the confirmation. Save a copy of the lookup with the date. Boundaries and choice seats are not something you remember accurately three weeks later in a multiple-offer weekend.

Recheck at four moments. Recheck on the day you tour, so you do not fall in love with a kitchen before you know the zone. Recheck the day you write the offer, using the contract address. Recheck before closing if the closing date is far out, because you want the result you will enroll with, not the result from the first Sunday. Recheck if you switch houses. A failed contract that sends you to a different street is a new zone question even when both streets share a pool and a mailbox style.

Temporary lodging during the PCS does not lock the future house. Families often spend the first weeks in lodging at the air station or at Mayport, or in a hotel on the side of town they think they want. You can ask a school about starting from orders while you are still in that temporary bed. You should not type the lodge into the locator and then shop only inside whatever came back. The house you buy has its own lookup. If the temporary address and the purchase address return different schools, that is normal. Plan the child's start around the address you will still hold after the temporary stay ends, unless the school tells you a short-term enrollment is appropriate and you understand it will change when you move.

Mailing addresses confuse beach and Mandarin shoppers. A Jacksonville mailing address can sit in Duval, or a nearby St. Johns house can still say Jacksonville on some mail. City name is not county, and county is not zone. Confirm the county on the property record first. Then run the Duval locator only if the county is Duval. Atlantic Beach, Neptune Beach, and Jacksonville Beach will often show a city name that is not Jacksonville. They are still Duval public schools. San Marco, Riverside, and Ortega use Jacksonville as the city and are also Duval public schools. The city field will not do this job for you.

ZIP codes will not do it either. A ZIP can cover more than one zone, and some ZIPs ride along a county line. Do not ask a forum which elementary school "32210" or "32233" or any other ZIP attends. Ask the locator about one street address. If a seller's disclosure names a school, thank them for the hint and verify it. Disclosures are not the district.

Choice and magnets

A DCPS enrollment article says Duval is a school choice district. Students always have a seat at the neighborhood zoned school. Families can apply to other schools if space exists. Those three sentences are the policy picture this guide will use. The article is linked here, and the district's choice page is DCPS Choice. Read the live page before you rely on a date, because a news-style article records what the district published at the time, and the choice page is where the district keeps the process.

The guaranteed piece is the neighborhood seat. "Always have a seat" is the article's language. It is not a guarantee that the seat is in a particular program, classroom, or elective. It is the reason you can buy or rent without winning a lottery first. The optional piece is the application to somewhere else, and it depends on space. Space existing last year is not space existing for your child. No one selling a house can promise that space.

The article describes two special-assignment applications. One is for magnets. One is for a neighborhood school that is not the address-assigned school. They are not the same form in the way the article explains the process. A family that wants a magnet should use the magnet application. A family that wants a different neighborhood campus, without describing it as a magnet, should use the other one. Filling out the wrong request and hoping the district sorts it is not a plan. The choice page is the place to confirm which application is open and what it asks for.

Accepting one special assignment removes the student from other waiting lists. That is the article's rule, and it is the rule that surprises people in spring. If you accept a school you can tolerate while you are still hoping for a different school, the article says the other lists go away. Do not click accept on a backup until you are finished hoping for the first choice, unless you have called and you understand that the acceptance is the decision. This guide will not soften that sentence. The district article is plain about it.

The article gave a 2026-27 special-assignment window of Dec. 1, 2025 through Jan. 31, 2026. That is the window printed for that cycle. A family reading this guide later should not treat those dates as the next cycle's dates. Windows move. If you are shopping in a later school year, open the choice page and read the current window. If you missed the window the article named, do not invent a late process. Ask the district what, if anything, remains for the current year, and keep the zoned seat as the plan that does not depend on a yes.

The same article said more than 140 traditional public schools were listed for a 2025 School Enrollment Expo. Use that as a scale marker. The menu at that expo was large. It does not mean more than 140 magnets, and it does not mean every one of those schools has space in your child's grade. It means a newcomer should not shop schools from memory or from a short list a neighbor texts over. The choice page and the expo materials, when the district publishes a new set, are the list. This guide will not reprint a campus directory the article did not itemize.

Transportation is available for magnet programs, the article says, and the transportation page says magnet transportation has separate guidelines. Both facts matter to a house. "Available" does not mean the same bus rules as the neighborhood route, and it does not mean a stop at your driveway. Read the magnet guidelines before you assume a Westside house can painlessly feed a magnet on the other side of the river, or the reverse. Separate guidelines means you look them up, not that you copy the 1.5 mile and 2 mile neighborhood thresholds onto a magnet and call it done. Those mileage thresholds are stated for assigned-school eligibility, which is a different section of this guide.

Transportation

The district transportation page is dcps.duvalschools.org/page/transportation. It says the operation runs 860 buses, carries about 48,000 students, makes more than 3,600 daily trips, and covers about 10 million miles a year. Those are the district's figures for the system, not a count of buses on your street and not a promise that your child is one of the roughly 48,000 riders. Many students are driven, and eligibility is a mileage rule, not an automatic seat on a bus because you enrolled.

The district says it ranks first in Florida for newest fleet. That is the district's claim, quoted here as a claim, not as an independent ranking this office calculated. A newer fleet is about the buses the district is describing. It does not change whether your address qualifies, and it does not tell you the age of the particular bus on a particular route.

The Free Press of Jacksonville republished Team Duval's 2026-27 back-to-school guide on July 21, 2026. That guide said the first day was Aug. 10, 2026, and that the district was adding 36 new electric buses through the federal Clean School Bus Program. It also said families must register for the bus, including self-contained ESE students. The republished guide is here. If you are reading after Aug. 10, 2026, that first day has already happened for the 2026-27 year. The electric-bus count is a fleet fact from that guide, not a statement that your route is electric.

Eligibility on the transportation page is distance-based. Elementary students more than 1.5 miles from the assigned school are eligible. Middle and high students more than 2 miles from the assigned school are eligible. Special Transfer Option students are not eligible. Magnet transportation has separate guidelines, which matches the enrollment article's statement that transportation is available for magnet programs, without copying the neighborhood mileage rule onto magnets. Do not measure a drive in a maps app and treat your own mileage as the official decision. The thresholds are the district's. Confirm eligibility with transportation if you are close to the line or if the stop you expect is not the stop they assign.

Bus registration for 2026-27 is open, according to the district's bus registration page. Registration requires a linked parent Focus account. Routes show in Focus only after yearly registration. Self-contained ESE students must also register. The primary address sets the stop. None of that happens because you enrolled in school and assumed the bus would follow. Yearly means you do it for the year in question even if an older child rode last year, and even if you registered at a previous Duval address.

Alternate-address requests are a second step, not a shortcut around the primary address. The bus registration page says those requests go to transportation at (904) 858-6200, option 1, after the form. Use that when the stop that matches the primary address is not the stop you are asking for, and follow the form rather than flagging a driver down. The main transportation line is (904) 858-6200, weekdays 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. That is the district line. Contractor numbers, by side of town, are in the next section. Call the district line for registration and eligibility questions. Do not expect a contractor to invent a zone.

Contractors by side of town

The district's vendor page splits the county between two companies. The page is dcps.duvalschools.org/page/busvendor. Durham serves Beaches and Arlington, and also serves Southside and Mandarin, at two different numbers. Student Transportation of America serves Northside, Downtown, and the Airport area, and also serves the Westside, again at two different numbers. The district still owns the eligibility rules and the registration process. The vendor is who the district lists for day-to-day route contact on that side of town.

Side of town Contractor Phone on the vendor page
Beaches and Arlington Durham (904) 898-9616
Southside and Mandarin Durham (904) 731-4150
Northside, Downtown, and Airport Student Transportation of America (904) 723-4352
Westside Student Transportation of America (904) 661-2370

The main district transportation line remains (904) 858-6200, weekdays 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Use it for the registration and alternate-address path the bus page describes. Use the vendor number when you need the yard that serves your side of town and the district has pointed you at that page. Calling the Westside yard about a Jacksonville Beach stop, or calling the beaches Durham number about a Mandarin stop, burns a morning. Durham covers both Beaches and Arlington and Southside and Mandarin, but the vendor page gives those areas different phone numbers. Match the area, not just the company name.

The split follows the way PCS families already talk about the county. Westside, including the neighborhoods people use for NAS Jacksonville, is the Student Transportation of America Westside number. Northside, Downtown, and the airport area share the other Student Transportation of America number, so a downtown loft and a house near the airport are grouped by the vendor page even though the drives to Mayport are not the same. Arlington is paired with the beaches on the Durham beaches number. Southside and Mandarin share the other Durham number. If you move from Ortega to the beaches, you can change contractors without changing districts. If you move from Arlington to Mandarin, you can stay with Durham and still change the phone number on the vendor page.

None of these companies sets your school. A dispatcher cannot place a child in a magnet, cannot waive the Special Transfer Option exclusion, and cannot turn a St. Johns address into a Duval route. If a stop is wrong after you have registered, the vendor is part of fixing the route, and the district line is part of the official process. Start from registration and Focus, because the transportation page says routes show in Focus only after yearly registration. A vendor cannot display a route the district has not registered.

Geography and the three Navy gates

Duval is a wide county built around a river that runs north to the ocean and a beltway that crosses that river twice. Downtown sits on a bend. The west bank holds Riverside, Avondale, Ortega, and NAS Jacksonville, then the suburban Westside beyond them. The east bank holds Arlington, the route to the beaches, and, farther north, the roads toward Blount Island. The beach cities sit on the barrier side of the Intracoastal Waterway. Mandarin sits south, along the river, before the county line cuts off St. Johns. None of those sentences assigns a school. They tell you which gate the house is built around, and which locator search you still have to run.

Every drive time below is a usual weekday range, not a study, not a promise, and not a door-to-door measurement for bus eligibility. Bridges, a crash on the Buckman, a ship movement, rain, and the hour you leave will move the number. Use the range to decide whether a house is in the right part of the county for your orders. Then drive it yourself on a weekday morning before you waive a contingency over a commute you have only imagined.

NAS Jacksonville and the Westside

NAS Jacksonville sits on the west bank, along Roosevelt Boulevard, which is US 17. Ortega is immediately in that world. Farther west and southwest, buyers look along 103rd Street, Blanding Boulevard, Collins Road, the Argyle area, Normandy, Herlong, Lake Shore, Hyde Park, Cedar Hills, Wesconnett, and Confederate Point. Avondale and Riverside are closer to downtown than those western subdivisions, and they are still on the same side of the river as the air station. San Marco is across downtown on the south bank. It is not the Westside, and it is still Duval.

Westside drives to NAS Jacksonville are often under 20 minutes on a usual weekday. That is the range to use for the neighborhoods people actually mean when they say they live by the air station, including the Ortega end of the west bank. It is not a range for a beach house, and it is not a range for a St. Johns house that happens to face west. If the orders are to the air station and both spouses work on or next to the base, this side of the county is why people accept a suburban Westside lot instead of a beach walk.

The same Westside address is a cross-town trip to Naval Station Mayport and to Blount Island. This guide does not give a minute figure for that cross-town trip. The route is real: you cross the county on I-295, or you come through downtown and take a bridge, and the Buckman, the Matthews, the Hart, or the Dames Point can each become the slow part. Call it a long drive in planning language. Do not pretend it matches the under-20-minute air-station range.

Blanding Boulevard is the trap road. It runs from the Westside toward Orange Park and Middleburg. Those cities are Clay County once you have crossed out of Duval. A house can feel like "the NAS side" and sit in Clay County District Schools. Oakleaf, which many air-station families shop because the rooftops look continuous, is Clay. If the county record says Clay, you are in the wrong guide. The Duval side of that southwestern edge is still this district, and the locator still decides the campus. Proximity to the air station does not merge the two districts.

Arlington and the east bank

Arlington is the broad east bank between the St. Johns and the Intracoastal, south of the Dames Point area and inland from the beach cities. Fort Caroline, Regency, and the Monument Road corridor are the names buyers use inside that band. The Matthews Bridge, the Arlington Expressway, the Hart Bridge, and, farther north, the Dames Point Bridge on I-295 are how this side reaches downtown or the north bank. Beach Boulevard, Atlantic Boulevard, and J. Turner Butler Boulevard keep going east until they cross the Intracoastal into the beach cities.

From Arlington to Naval Station Mayport, the drive is often 15 to 30 minutes on a usual weekday. That range is why Mayport orders and an Arlington address show up together. The base sits just north of Atlantic Beach. Wonderwood Drive and Mayport Road are the usual last miles, not a trip across the Buckman. Families who want a mainland house, a yard, and a Mayport gate often end up comparing Arlington with the beaches rather than with the Westside.

Arlington to NAS Jacksonville is the reverse problem. You are no longer in the under-20-minute Westside range. You are crossing the river or going around it. Drive that leg yourself. This page does not give it a minute range. If the sailor is at the air station and the house is in Arlington because the spouse likes the east side, drive it on a weekday before you treat the two sides as interchangeable. The school zone will also change, because the address changed, even though both addresses are Duval.

The beach cities and Mayport

Atlantic Beach, Neptune Beach, and Jacksonville Beach are separate municipalities south and alongside Naval Station Mayport. Mayport village itself is Jacksonville, tucked next to the basin. The public schools for the three beach cities are Duval County Public Schools even though city hall is not the City of Jacksonville's. A buyer who wants "the beaches district" is describing a feeling, not a school board. Run the Duval locator on the beach address.

The beaches sit with Mayport rather than with the air station. That is the orientation. A Mayport tour and a beach address are the pairing that matches the map. An air-station tour and a beach address are a lifestyle choice that spends the commute. Do not use the Westside "often under 20 minutes" line on a Neptune Beach house and the air station. It is the wrong side of the county.

South of Jacksonville Beach, Ponte Vedra is St. Johns County. The tax record will say so even when the drive up A1A into Jacksonville Beach is short and the shopping feels continuous. A St. Johns address does not use this district. Confirm the county before you fall for an oceanfront or a golf-course house that will not feed a Duval zone. The same warning applies to Nocatee and other southern communities that market toward Jacksonville.

Blount Island

Blount Island is a port and a Marine Corps support site, not a neighborhood you live on. It sits north of Arlington, reached from Heckscher Drive and from the Dames Point Bridge on I-295. People who work there usually live in Arlington, on the Northside, at the beaches, or somewhere else they have decided is worth the drive. There is no Blount subdivision to type into the locator.

The St. Johns River Ferry runs between Mayport and the Fort George Island side of Heckscher Drive. It is a real geographic option for someone connecting the beach and Mayport side with the Heckscher side. This guide does not publish a crossing time or a fare. If that ferry is part of your daily plan, ride it on a weekday before you write an offer that depends on it. A ferry is not a school boundary.

Mandarin and the south end

Mandarin is south Duval along the St. Johns, generally talked about around San Jose Boulevard, Mandarin Road, and Old St. Augustine Road. It is still the City of Jacksonville and still this school district. It is not the Westside, and it is not the beaches. NAS Jacksonville from Mandarin is often 20 to 40 minutes on a usual weekday. Mayport or Blount from Mandarin is often 35 to 60 minutes on a usual weekday. Both ranges are usual weekday ranges, not a traffic study.

The county line at the south end is the mistake. Fruit Cove, Julington, and Switzerland are across that line in St. Johns, even when a shopper describes them as "near Mandarin." A Mandarin mailing habit does not move the line. If you want Duval schools, the property has to be in Duval. If you want a St. Johns school, you want a different guide and a different locator. Standing in a model home and guessing from the direction of the river is how people enroll in the wrong district.

San Marco, Riverside, Ortega, and downtown

San Marco, Riverside, and Ortega are urban and close-in Duval neighborhoods, not separate school districts. Ortega sits on the west bank near the air station, so the Westside usual weekday range to NAS Jacksonville, often under 20 minutes, is the range that fits that geography. Riverside sits closer to downtown on the same bank. San Marco sits south of downtown across the river, with bridges back to the core. A buyer who pictures "Duval schools" as suburban campuses only should slow down. These neighborhoods are in the district. The locator assigns them the same way it assigns a subdivision off 103rd Street.

Northside, Southside, and Baldwin

The Northside, in local speech, is the airport, Dunn Avenue, the River City Marketplace area, New Berlin, Oceanway, Garden City, and the roads toward Heckscher. It is often the conversation for families who want a lower price and can live with the drive they measure themselves. The airport area is the area the vendor page groups with Northside and Downtown. School assignment remains the address.

The Southside, in local speech, is Baymeadows, Deerwood, Gate Parkway, the Town Center, Hodges, and Kernan, between Mandarin and the Arlington-to-beaches corridors. J. Turner Butler Boulevard is the road people mean. A Southside address is Duval. It is not automatically "Mandarin schools" and not automatically "beach schools." The vendor page puts Southside with Mandarin for Durham's phone number, which is a bus-contractor fact only. Your campus comes from the locator. If you need a minute range the sections above did not give, drive it on a weekday.

Baldwin is the far-west town in Duval, out toward the interstate and US 90, with its own city hall and this district's schools. It is not a short hop to any of the three gates in the way Ortega is a short hop to the air station. Drive Baldwin on a weekday before you call it close to a gate. This page does not give that trip a minute range. If the price looks different from the rest of the county, the distance is part of why. Confirm the county is Duval, run the locator, and drive the weekday trip before you call it a NAS Jacksonville house.

How to pair a gate with a house hunt

Pair the gate with the side of the county, then still run the locator. For NAS Jacksonville orders, start on the Westside and Ortega side, where a usual weekday drive is often under 20 minutes, and treat Mandarin as often 20 to 40 minutes on a usual weekday. For Mayport orders, start with Arlington, often 15 to 30 minutes on a usual weekday, and with the beach cities, which sit with Mayport rather than the air station. For Blount Island, think Heckscher, the Northside approach, Arlington, and the Dames Point, and remember Mandarin to Mayport or Blount is often 35 to 60 minutes on a usual weekday. Two gates in one household means one of those drives will be the long one. The zoned seat still has to be a seat you can accept if choice does not come through.

What zoning is not

Zoning is not the sentence in the listing remarks. Agents type school names from memory, from the last listing on the street, or from a field that a website filled in. That sentence does not enroll your child. If it is right, the locator will agree with it. If it is wrong, the locator still controls. Do not send an offer that says you relied on the remarks. Rely on the tool, dated the day you relied on it.

Zoning is not a Niche score, a GreatSchools star, a Facebook thread, or a Zillow school tab. Those products are not the district and not the Florida Department of Education report card. This office does not treat them as facts. A star can rise or fall without your zone changing, and a zone can change without a star chart agreeing. The DOE card at the report card site is the grade source. The locator is the assignment source. Everything else is commentary.

Zoning is not the district grade. News4Jax reported a district grade of A for Duval from the July 1, 2026 DOE release. The DOE packet's share of graded schools was 37% A, 22% B, 38% C, 3% D, and 0% F. A district A can sit on top of a campus that is not an A. The share tables are about graded schools as a group. Your house is one address.

Zoning is not the city on the mailbox. Atlantic Beach is not its own school district. Neptune Beach is not. Jacksonville Beach is not. Baldwin is not. San Marco does not opt out by being old and close-in. A Jacksonville word on an envelope does not pull a St. Johns house into Duval, and a beach city name does not pull a Duval house out.

Zoning is not the high school you drove past on the way to the showing. Campuses sit on arterial roads. You can pass a high school that serves a different set of addresses, including a high school whose 2024-25 size you read in the Duval Times list, and still be assigned somewhere else. The names in that list are not a map. Passing Duncan U. Fletcher, Sandalwood, Englewood, First Coast, Edward H. White, Riverside, Atlantic Coast, or Mandarin tells you that you passed a school. It does not tell you that the next subdivision for sale is inside it.

Zoning is not the school a coworker uses. Coworkers choose magnets, inherit old special assignments, live one street outside the subdivision, or live in Clay and say "Jacksonville" because that is the city they drive to. Ask where they live, then look up your own street anyway. Their satisfaction with a campus is a personal review. It is not an assignment.

Zoning is not a magnet the seller's child attended. Magnets are applications. Accepting one special assignment removes that student from other waiting lists, which is a rule about the student, not about the property. When the seller moves, the seat does not stay behind as a fixture. You do not buy a waiting-list position.

Zoning is not a ZIP code, a neighborhood nickname, or an elementary school mascot on a yard sign. Yard signs elect school board members and advertise fundraisers. They do not draw boundaries. If two houses on one street disagree in the locator, believe the two lookups. Rare address quirks are still address quirks. Call the district if the tool returns something that looks broken, such as a missing new-construction address. Do not average the neighbors.

Zoning is not permanent in the sense of "never look again." The result you need is the result in force when you enroll, and again if you move inside the county. This page does not describe a redraw calendar. The practical habit is to recheck at the offer and at enrollment. A screenshot from a house hunt six months ago is a note, not a current assignment.

PCS and MIC3

Florida participates in the Military Interstate Children's Compact Commission. The state page is mic3.net/state/florida/. For a family with orders, the practical point is that you can start the enrollment conversation before you are holding keys. You do not have to wait for the recorded deed to ask the receiving school what it needs. That is the part of the compact that matches a real PCS, where the report date and the closing date refuse to line up.

The compact is not a waiver of residency. You do not get to pick a Duval campus because the orders say Jacksonville. You do not get to keep a seat from the last state as if it were a Duval seat. The address you will occupy still sets the zone, unless a choice placement applies. If you start enrollment against a rental you have under lease, that rental address is the address that matters. If the purchase then closes on a different street, you update the school. Starting early is not the same thing as locking a campus to a house you might not buy.

Use the compact in this order. First, know the address you are actually going to occupy, even if you do not own it yet. A signed lease is enough to look up. A house under contract is enough to look up, with the understanding that a fallen contract changes the lookup. Second, call the zoned school with the orders in hand and ask what they need in order to start. Third, ask the sending school what they will transmit and what you should carry. The two schools will name the forms. Do not pack from another state's checklist and assume it is complete. Your job is to start that pair of conversations before the first day becomes an emergency.

Carry orders, identification, and whatever proof of address you actually have. If the proof is a lease, bring the lease. If the proof is a contract and you have not closed, say so, and ask the school whether that is enough to begin or whether they need you to wait. Do not describe a hotel as a permanent address in order to grab a zone you toured and liked. That stunt fails later, and it is not what the compact is for. The compact is a way to keep a child from losing time. It is not a way to shop zones from temporary lodging.

The compact does not reserve a magnet and it does not put you at the front of a special-assignment list. Magnets and non-zoned neighborhood seats run through the two special-assignment applications the DCPS enrollment article describes. The article gave a window of Dec. 1, 2025 through Jan. 31, 2026 for 2026-27. If your report date misses a window, the zoned seat is the seat the article says you always have. Ask the choice office whether anything else is open. Do not assume orders outrank the window.

Records are the other half of a clean start. Unofficial grades, a course list, an IEP or 504 if the child has one, and immunization paperwork are the usual contents of the folder families wish they had packed. The receiving school decides what is required for placement in a grade or a course. The compact is there so military children are not punished for the move itself. It is not a promise that every credit maps without a counselor looking at it. Call and ask about the specific courses, especially for high school students in the middle of a sequence. Do that with the zoned school, not with a school you hope a magnet will become.

If one parent will stay behind to sell the old house, be clear about which parent and which child will be in Duval on which date. A child who remains in the sending district until winter is not a Duval enrollment yet. A child who flies ahead needs an address in Duval that the school will accept as the residence. Split timelines are normal on military moves. They are also how people enroll against the wrong house. Write the dates down. Match each date to an address. Run the locator for that address.

Before you write an offer

Do the school work before the offer, not during the inspection. Inspection is about the building. The zone is public information on the day you tour. If the campus is a reason you would walk away, you want to know before you compete, before you release an earnest-money deadline, and before you fall in love with a porch. A fast Duval weekend punishes buyers who treat schools as a Monday chore.

Start with the county. Open the property record and read the county. Duval stays on this page. Clay, St. Johns, and Nassau do not. Then copy the legal address, including the unit, and paste it into My School Location. Save the result with the date and the address string you used. If you are comparing three houses, save three results. Do not trust yourself to remember which elementary name went with which cul-de-sac.

Open the DOE report card for each campus the locator named: the school report card site. Read the letter. You now know more than the district grade of A that News4Jax reported, because you know the campus. If the card and a real estate tab disagree, keep the card and ignore the tab. If you do not understand a component on the card, ask the school, and do not fill the gap with a forum.

Decide, in writing, whether you would still buy the house if choice never happens. The DCPS article says you always have the neighborhood seat and that other schools depend on space. Your offer should match that structure. A sentence in your notes that says "only if the magnet hits" is a sentence that says you are not ready to write. Either drop that house, or change the note to "zoned school is acceptable, magnet would be extra." Couples should agree on the note. A deployment is a bad time to discover you disagreed.

Drive the gate on a weekday at the hour you would actually leave. Compare what you drove with the usual weekday ranges in this guide, and do not promote those ranges into a guarantee. Westside to NAS Jacksonville is often under 20 minutes. Arlington to Mayport is often 15 to 30 minutes. Mandarin to NAS Jacksonville is often 20 to 40 minutes. Mandarin to Mayport or Blount is often 35 to 60 minutes. Beaches pair with Mayport, not with the air station. If your drive was far outside the range, believe your drive. Construction and a bad morning are allowed to beat a range. The range is only there so you do not start the search on the wrong side of the river.

Ask the bus question only after you know the assigned school. Elementary eligibility starts at more than 1.5 miles from the assigned school. Middle and high eligibility starts at more than 2 miles. Special Transfer Option students are not eligible. Magnet rules are separate. You will not finish bus registration before you write a typical offer, and you do not need to. You do need to know whether you are buying a house that will probably be a car house, so the morning logistics belong in the budget. Confirm the edge cases with transportation at (904) 858-6200 rather than with a mapping printout.

If the address is new construction and the locator does not recognize it, do not write an offer that assumes the model home's school. Make the unanswered zone a conscious risk. Some buyers will take that risk inside a subdivision they have already checked lot by lot. Some will not. Either posture is reasonable. An unconscious risk is how you end up enrolled somewhere you never priced into the decision.

Enrollment steps

Do these in order once you know the address you will actually occupy. Skipping ahead is how families arrive at a campus the contract does not match.

Confirm the county on the property record. If it is not Duval, this district is the wrong office. If it is Duval, including a house in Atlantic Beach, Neptune Beach, Jacksonville Beach, Baldwin, San Marco, Riverside, or Ortega, stay here. Copy the full street address, with the unit if there is one.

Open My School Location and read the neighborhood assignment. That is the seat a DCPS enrollment article says the student always has. Save the screen with the date. If you still might switch houses, label the screenshot with the street so you do not enroll the child against the house you lost.

Call that zoned school. If you have orders and you do not have keys yet, say so. Florida's page for the Military Interstate Children's Compact is mic3.net/state/florida/. Orders can start the conversation. The address still sets the zone, and the compact is not a waiver of residency. Ask what proof of address they will accept while you are under contract or on a lease, and ask what they need from the sending school. Carry orders, identification, and the records you have. Let the school name the health forms. Do not guess a shot list from the last state.

Create the parent Focus account the district uses for bus registration, and link it. The bus registration page says 2026-27 registration is open and that a linked parent Focus account is required. Self-contained ESE students must also register. The primary address sets the stop. Routes show in Focus only after that yearly registration, which the transportation page also says. If you need a different stop, submit the form and then call transportation at (904) 858-6200, option 1. The main line answers weekdays from 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

Only after the zoned path is real should you open DCPS Choice. There are two special-assignment applications: one for magnets, and one for a neighborhood school that is not the address-assigned school. Use the one you mean. Accepting one special assignment removes the student from other waiting lists, so do not accept a backup while you are still waiting on a first choice. The DCPS enrollment article gave a 2026-27 window of Dec. 1, 2025 through Jan. 31, 2026. If that is not your cycle, read the live page instead of copying those dates forward.

Check the calendar you are actually in. The Free Press of Jacksonville republished Team Duval's 2026-27 back-to-school guide on July 21, 2026, and that guide put the first day on Aug. 10, 2026. A family enrolling after that date is already inside the year. Ask the school what a mid-year start looks like. Do not invent the next year's first day from this one.

How to read a campus grade

Get the campus name from the locator first. A grade without a name is a district story, and a district story is not your house. Then open the Florida Department of Education school report cards and search that name. The letter on that card is the campus grade. News4Jax, on July 1, 2026, reporting the DOE release, said Duval's district grade was A. That district letter can sit next to a campus letter that is not A. Read the card anyway.

Use the 2026 packet for context, not for the house. The DOE packet reports Duval's share of graded schools as A 37%, B 22%, C 38%, D 3%, and F 0%. Those are shares of graded schools. They are not a promise about one address. News4Jax reported 134 district schools and 39 charters, totaled as 173, and letter counts of A 64, B 37, and C 64. Do not blend the percentage table and the count table into a homemade score. Do not subtract them to invent a number of D schools. The packet already states the D share and the F share.

A charter inside that count of 39 is not the neighborhood seat. Florida Cyber Charter Academy at 1,677 students in 2024-25 was in the same Duval Times high school table as the neighborhood high schools that story listed. The name says charter. Enrollment size is not a grade, and a grade is not an assignment. Duval Times, citing the Florida Department of Education, put district enrollment at 130,054 in 2024-25. That total does not tell you the letter on the campus you just looked up.

Read the letter as one year's summary. It is not a review of a teacher, a section, or the year your child has not started. If two houses you can afford return two campuses you can live with, the two cards are a fair comparison. If you only know the district A, you do not yet have a comparison. Ignore star charts and real estate school tabs. They are not this packet and not this card.

After you have the letter, decide what you will do with it. Some families treat a C as a reason to keep looking inside Duval, which is allowed, because the packet's C share of graded schools is 38% and the News4Jax C count is 64. Some families treat the zoned school as acceptable and spend their energy on the commute to NAS Jacksonville, Mayport, or Blount Island. Either choice is a family choice. It is not a choice the district grade can make for you. If you want a different campus, that is the choice process, and it depends on space.

FAQ

Is Jacksonville one school district?

Duval County Public Schools covers the consolidated city and also Atlantic Beach, Neptune Beach, Jacksonville Beach, and Baldwin. Clay, St. Johns, and Nassau are separate districts. Confirm the county on the property record before you open My School Location.

Are the beach cities in this district?

Yes. Atlantic Beach, Neptune Beach, and Jacksonville Beach have their own city halls. Their public school students are still Duval students. Ponte Vedra is St. Johns County, not this district, even when the drive up the coast is short.

Does the listing's school line assign my child?

No. The address sets the zone unless the student is in Choice. Remarks, a coworker, and a real estate school tab can all be wrong. Run the locator on the legal address and save the date.

Does a district grade of A mean my house is an A school?

No. News4Jax reported a district grade of A from the July 1, 2026 DOE release. The same story's letter counts were A 64, B 37, and C 64. The DOE packet's share of graded schools was A 37%, B 22%, C 38%, D 3%, and F 0%. Look up the campus on the report card site.

Is there always a seat at the neighborhood school?

A DCPS enrollment article says students always have a seat at the neighborhood zoned school, and that families can apply to other schools if space exists. The guaranteed piece is the zoned seat. The optional piece depends on space.

What is the difference between the two special-assignment applications?

The same article describes one application for magnets and one for a neighborhood school that is not the address-assigned school. They are different requests. Confirm which one is open on the choice page.

If we accept one assignment, do we stay on other lists?

No. The article says accepting one special assignment removes the student from other waiting lists. Do not accept a backup while you still want a different school.

What window did the district publish for 2026-27 special assignments?

The article gave Dec. 1, 2025 through Jan. 31, 2026. That was the window for that cycle. A later cycle can have different dates. Read the live choice page before you plan around those dates.

Is the 130,054 figure this year's enrollment?

No. Duval Times, on Aug. 28, 2026, citing the Florida Department of Education, reported 130,054 students in 2024-25, up 0.7% from the prior year. It is not a 2026-27 count.

Do we get a bus automatically?

No. You must register, including self-contained ESE students. The bus page says 2026-27 registration is open and requires a linked parent Focus account. Routes show in Focus only after yearly registration. The primary address sets the stop.

How far from school before a student is eligible for a bus?

The transportation page says elementary students more than 1.5 miles from the assigned school are eligible, and middle and high students more than 2 miles are eligible. Special Transfer Option students are not eligible. Magnet transportation has separate guidelines.

Who do I call about a Westside stop or a beach stop?

The district line is (904) 858-6200, weekdays 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. The vendor page lists Student Transportation of America for the Westside at (904) 661-2370, and Durham for Beaches and Arlington at (904) 898-9616. Southside and Mandarin use Durham at (904) 731-4150. Northside, Downtown, and the Airport use Student Transportation of America at (904) 723-4352.

Can orders start enrollment before we have keys?

Yes. The Florida compact page says you can start from orders. The address you will occupy still sets the zone. The compact is not a waiver of residency, and it does not reserve a magnet.

Where should a Mayport family start looking, and where should an air-station family start?

Arlington to Mayport is often 15 to 30 minutes on a usual weekday, and the beach cities sit with Mayport rather than with the air station. Westside drives to NAS Jacksonville are often under 20 minutes on a usual weekday. Mandarin to the air station is often 20 to 40 minutes, and Mandarin to Mayport or Blount is often 35 to 60. Those are usual weekday ranges, not a study. The locator still assigns the school.

No. Duval Times listed 2024-25 enrollment for Atlantic Coast at 2,887, Sandalwood at 2,627, Mandarin at 2,343, Duncan U. Fletcher at 2,184, First Coast at 2,098, Englewood at 1,896, Edward H. White at 1,663, and Riverside at 1,638. Florida Cyber Charter Academy at 1,677 was in that same table. Size is not a grade, and the table is not a zone map.

Sources

District home: dcps.duvalschools.org. Address tool, which states that the address sets the zone unless Choice: My School Location. Choice applications: DCPS Choice.

The choice rules in this guide come from a DCPS enrollment article: Duval is a school choice district, students always have a seat at the neighborhood zoned school, families can apply elsewhere if space exists, more than 140 traditional public schools were listed for a 2025 School Enrollment Expo, there are two special-assignment applications, accepting one removes the student from other waiting lists, transportation is available for magnet programs, and the 2026-27 window it gave was Dec. 1, 2025 through Jan. 31, 2026. Article: dcps.duvalschools.org/article/2523118.

Enrollment figures are from Duval Times, Aug. 28, 2026, citing the Florida Department of Education: 130,054 students in 2024-25, up 0.7% from the prior year, plus the high school counts named above, with Florida Cyber Charter Academy at 1,677 in that same table. Story: Duval Times enrollment story. That is 2024-25, not 2026-27.

Grade shares are from the Florida Department of Education 2026 school-grade packet: A 37%, B 22%, C 38%, D 3%, F 0% of graded schools. Packet: SchoolGradesResultsPacket26.pdf. News4Jax, July 1, 2026, reporting that release, gave the district grade of A, 134 district schools and 39 charters (173), and letter counts A 64, B 37, C 64. Story: News4Jax school grades. Campus letters: DOE report cards.

Bus counts, mileage, fleet claim, Focus, and the main line are on the transportation page: 860 buses, about 48,000 students, more than 3,600 daily trips, about 10 million miles a year, the district's claim that it ranks first in Florida for newest fleet, elementary eligibility beyond 1.5 miles, middle and high eligibility beyond 2 miles, Special Transfer Option students not eligible, separate magnet guidelines, routes in Focus only after yearly registration, and (904) 858-6200 on weekdays from 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Registration details are on the bus registration page. Contractors are on the vendor page. The first day of Aug. 10, 2026, the 36 electric buses, and the reminder to register, including self-contained ESE students, are from Team Duval's 2026-27 guide as republished by the Free Press of Jacksonville on July 21, 2026: back-to-school guide.

Military moves: MIC3 Florida. Orders can start enrollment before keys. The address still sets the zone. The compact is not a waiver of residency.

Drive ranges in the geography section are usual weekday ranges for orientation, not a traffic study and not bus-eligibility measurements. Westside to NAS Jacksonville is often under 20 minutes. Arlington to Mayport is often 15 to 30 minutes. The beaches sit with Mayport rather than the air station. Mandarin to NAS Jacksonville is often 20 to 40 minutes, and Mandarin to Mayport or Blount is often 35 to 60 minutes.

Search Duval County homes

Campus search, separate from this guide: search homes by campus. Back to the school district guides. Call or text Military Realty of Florida at (904) 309-0609.

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