Off The Shelf

The History of Jackson Academy: First Fifty Years is the story of a family, the JA family.  From the school's inception in 1959, ten families joined together to follow the vision of one man, Loyal Bearss. The founder and first headmaster of Jackson Academy was a single-minded man whose goal remained constant until his death in 2006:  to teach children how to read using his phonics method.  These ten families took their children out of a well-established independent school and entrusted them to a relatively unknown academician and his theories.  In place of a solid brick structure with beautifully landscaped grounds, the new school was housed in a modest, wooden home on Northview Drive in Jackson, Mississippi.