Mebane mayor Ed Hooks and other local officials with gather to break ground tomorrow on a new free public charter school scheduled to open this August for the upcoming 2025-26 school year at 6920 West Ten Road, on the eastern outskirts of Mebane’s city limits and in western Orange County.
Carolina Achieve will be the fifth charter school serving students in Alamance County, though enrollment will be limited initially to students in kindergarten through second grade for the upcoming 2025-26 school year. The site is just over the Alamance County line, on the Orange County side of Mebane and approximately 2½ miles from Gravelly Hill Middle School, which is part of the Orange County school system.
The new charter school will have modular classrooms until the construction of a permanent school building is complete, according to Bob Bedi, a Raleigh-based consultant for Carolina Achieve,
Hubrich Contracting of Durham has been selected to build a permanent facility for Carolina Achieve, Bedi said Monday morning in an interview with The Alamance News.
Hubrich Contracting has previously built dozens of other charter school facilities throughout the region and state, including: Alamance Community School in Haw River; Durham Charter School near Research Triangle Park in Durham; Eno River Academy in Hillsborough; and two additions for Voyager Academy in Durham, as well as several charter schools in South Carolina, according to the firm. Hubrich Contracting completed the construction of a new 12,000-square foot gymnasium at Alamance Community School in December 2024.
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The charter for Carolina Achieve allows for enrollment of up to 300 students for the first year (2025-26) and calls for additional grade levels, up through eighth grade, to be added for each subsequent year of operation, Bedi said.
The new charter school opening just outside Mebane’s city limits will offer an open enrollment period for the 2025-26 school year on Friday, Febraury 14, Bedi explained.
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“The way the state operates, with charter schools, you’re expected to operate with open enrollment,” Bedi said. “The premise is, you go to a certain point [with that process] – you might have 50 slots for students – then you close open enrollment.”
Once the open enrollment window closes, Carolina Achieve will admit additional students using a lottery system, with 20 percent of seats at each grade level reserved for students who qualify for free and reduced-price lunches in order to ensure that the student population reflects the “diverse economic spectrum of Alamance, Orange, and Durham counties,” according to the charter school.
Carolina Achieve will open this August with slots for up to 100 students at each grade level, founding board chairman John Oxaal of Durham County said in an earlier interview with The Alamance News.
Trip Cogburn, who is the founding head of school, said he anticipates that Carolina Achieve will have a waitlist for enrollment by this spring.
“We will have one 10-room modular and one six-classroom modular [when we open in August],” Cogburn elaborated Wednesday afternoon in an interview with The Alamance News. “In the second year, we will add an additional six-classroom modular so we can accommodate the addition of third grade.”
Preliminary work – such as clearing and grading, along with the installation of pipes and other infrastructure – is currently underway so that, once the custom-built modular classroom buildings arrive, “we can begin getting everything ready for students in August,” Cogburn told the newspaper.
An Asheville native, Cogburn previously served as the head of school for Chesapeake Academy in Irvington, Virginia from June 2023 until July 2024; and as an upper school principal, an interim principal, and director of admission and enrollment at Carolina Day School in Asheville from 2018 to 2023, according to his online resume.
Prior to his tenure in charter school administration, Cogburn was an assistant basketball coach at the University of North Carolina at Asheville; an assistant men’s basketball coach at Mars Hill College; and later as the men’s varsity basketball coach at Veritas Christian Academy in Henderson County.
“North Carolina is home for me and my family, so the chance to come back was a huge [draw] for me and my family – [plus] the combination of the growth and opportunities in this area and the quality of people here,” Cogburn said in the interview. “We’ve been here less than a year; we already feel right at home [and] excited to be in a great part of this state.”
The head of school for Carolina Achieve holds a master’s degree in Innovation, Leadership, and Entrepreneurship from Western Carolina University and a bachelor’s degree in English from UNC-Chapel Hill.
Rigorous academic focus aligned with state’s standard curriculum
Like the site for the charter school itself, the educational focus for Carolina Achieve has shifted since its application was filed two years ago with the state charter school oversight board.
Originally, the forthcoming charter school was to have focused on Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) curriculum for high school students.
Now, Carolina Achieve will start with kindergarten through second grades – adding one grade, up to eighth grade, for each subsequent year of operation – and focus on “rigorous academic offerings” with “an overlay of entrepreneurial studies that will give our students a focus” intended to help them succeed in every aspect of life, Oxaal explained in the earlier interview.
Carolina Achieve will also follow the state’s standard curriculum, Cogburn confirmed for the newspaper Wednesday.
One deviation from its traditional K-12 public school counterparts is that Carolina Achieve, like many other N.C. charter schools, will start the 2025-26 school year on Thursday, August 21, 2025. North Carolina’s school calendar law prohibits the state’s 115 traditional K-12 public school systems from starting the school year before the last Monday in August.
Pressure campaign in northern Orange County shifts site westward
The application to open the new charter school had been approved by the state Charter School Review Board (CSRB) in 2023, when it was known as Western Triangle High School. The earlier iteration of the charter school had been proposed for a site just outside Hillsborough’s city limits, near the intersection of U.S. Highway 70A and Lawrence Road.
After Orange County’s commissioners rejected a rezoning request in June 2023, the potential site for the charter school shifted to the eastern outskirts of Mebane’s city limits.
Mebane’s city council voted unanimously in October 2024 to grant the special use permit allowing construction of the charter school to proceed on the 15.7-acre site.
Carolina Achieve will be built in two phases, based on plans that the developer, Hubrich, outlined for Mebane’s city council last fall.
During the first phase, the school will operate out of modular units and have up to 72 onsite parking spaces, with an entrance along West Ten Road. The second phase calls for the construction of a three-story 34,000-square foot building for grades K-8, another parking lot with 147 spaces, and a secondary access point along Rock Quarry Road.
A subsequent phase could include the construction of a gym and a soccer field at Carolina Achieve, Hubrich said at the time.
Carolina Achieve to offer school meals, bus transportation, and EC programming
Carolina Achieve will also offer breakfast, lunch, and after-school snacks, including free and reduced-price meals for students whose families qualify, according to the charter school.
Cogburn confirmed for the newspaper Wednesday that Carolina Achieve will provide bus transportation for students. “We anticipate running at least two buses in our first year,” he said. “We will design those bus routes based on where those families are coming from.”
The charter school says it will work to tailor instruction for students who transfer to Carolina Achieve with an Individualized Education Plan (IEP); and students who have a 504 plan will continue to receive those disability-related accommodations.
The groundbreaking ceremony is scheduled to run from Noon until 1:00 p.m. tomorrow, according to a notice from the Hillsborough/Orange County Chamber of Commerce.
Carolina Achieve has scheduled several information sessions for prospective students and their families. For details, visit: https://carolina-achieve.org/