Original Research by School Decision on Pace Center for Girls-jax
PACE Center for Girls in Jacksonville is an alternative school serving girls in middle and high school grades, operating out of a single campus on University Boulevard North in Jacksonville's urban core. The school is small, with an enrollment that puts it among the smallest settings in Duval County by any measure. It is not a charter school. State assessment data and graduation rate data were not available for this school, which is common for alternative schools of this type. Alternative programs often serve students whose educational pathways fall outside the standard accountability measures, so the absence of those figures does not carry the same meaning it would for a conventional school. A parent should contact the school directly to understand how student progress and outcomes are tracked.
The student body is racially and economically mixed. Black students make up a majority, with white and Hispanic students representing most of the remainder. A substantial share of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, indicating that economic need is a real feature of this community. Data on English learners and students with IEPs was not reported.
PACE, as publicly reported, is a nonprofit organization with a statewide network of centers designed specifically to serve girls who have faced trauma, justice involvement, school disruption, or other barriers to staying enrolled in a traditional setting. The Jacksonville center offers a trauma-informed, gender-responsive program model with wraparound social services, counseling, and academic instruction. This means the school's identity is inseparable from its purpose: it exists for a specific population, not as a general alternative to the district's other middle and high schools. A family considering this placement should expect a setting oriented toward stabilization, credit recovery, and personal advocacy alongside academics.
Jacksonville itself is a large, sprawling city with distinct neighborhood characters. The school sits in a northeastern residential corridor of the city, close to the urban fabric of the main Jacksonville grid but removed from the downtown riverfront. The city is heavily car-dependent outside of a handful of walkable pockets like Riverside, San Marco, and downtown, so getting to and from the school will almost certainly require a vehicle or arranged transit. Jacksonville's economy is anchored by health care systems, military presence, logistics tied to the port, and financial services, giving older students in career-oriented programs a range of potential community connections, though the data does not describe specific career pathway offerings at this campus.
The housing market in the zip code around the school shows home values sitting below the Florida statewide median and modestly below the national median, with rents that have remained relatively stable over the past year. The broader Jacksonville metro is publicly reported as one of the faster-growing areas in the country, with active downtown development and a residential population that has expanded steadily in recent years. For families, that growth context means the city is likely to continue drawing employers and investment, but it also adds pressure to a housing market that has historically been seen as affordable relative to other Florida metros.
No program-level details for this campus were available in the data, and the district brief for Duval County returned no confirmed recent changes relevant to parents. Anyone considering enrollment should ask the school directly about its specific program structure, counseling resources, reentry supports, and how it coordinates with Duval County Public Schools on credit and transcripts.
See more original research from School Decision →