Up to 300 students can enroll for this fall; half already have
A new charter school opening in Mebane this August has enrolled 148 students in kindergarten through second grade so far, and more enrollment applications are flowing in, based on an update that the state Charter Schools Review board heard Monday.
Located at 6920 West Ten Road in Mebane, across the county line in western Orange County, Carolina Achieve will be the fifth charter school serving students in Alamance County, though enrollment is initially limited to K-2 students for the first year, in keeping with its approved charter.
The Charter Schools Review Board approved Carolina Achieve in 2024 to open this August with maximum of 300 students in kindergarten through second grade, or 100 slots per grade.
Carolina Achieve is approximately 2½ miles from Gravelly Hill Middle School, which is part of the Orange County school system.
“We’re really comfortable with where we are right now, in terms of enrollment. Depending on the volume of applications that come in over the next six to eight weeks, we will either need to put people on a waitlist or hire additional staff.”
– Trip Cogburn, head of school for Carolina Achieve Charter School
“We anticipate we will likely open with between 175 and 200 [students] for this year,” founding head of school for Carolina Achieve Trip Cogburn said Wednesday afternoon in an interview with The Alamance News.
“We’re really comfortable with where we are right now, in terms of enrollment,” Cogburn said, adding, “depending on the volume of applications that come in over the next six to eight weeks, we will either need to put people on a waitlist or hire additional staff.”
Bob Bedi, a Raleigh-based consultant for Carolina Achieve, said Wednesday morning in an interview with The Alamance News that the charter school had received 11 more applications since the figures were compiled in late May for the update to the state review board. “I think we’re in a good spot moving forward,” he added.
The first students to enroll at Carolina Achieve represent a cross-section of Alamance County and northern Orange County, Bedi said Wednesday. “We’re anticipating a coverage area that involves Hillsborough and Mebane and all points in between,” he said. “We’re also getting folks further south of the interstate.”
Cogburn said Wednesday that Carolina Achieve is nearly fully-staffed for the new school year, with a total of 13 teachers and instructional assistants and other staff.
Carolina Achieve will open with modular classrooms until the construction of a permanent school building is finished, Bedi said. Hubrich Contracting of Durham is handling all aspects of construction, including installation of one 10-classroom modular and one six-classroom modular.
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“You can almost stack them in an interlocking way; it can have the effect of being one connected building,” Bedi explained Wednesday morning. “The pads have been poured and as of last week they were dropping in the trailers.”
Cogburn said Wednesday that Carolina Achieve hopes to receive a certificate of occupancy in July and will begin furnishing the modular buildings immediately afterward.
As is customary for most charter schools, Carolina Achieve will add additional grades, up to grade eight, during each subsequent year of operation, based on plans that Cogburn and Bedi previously outlined for the newspaper. An additional six-room modular will be added for the 2026-27 school year in order to add third grade classes if the current enrollment trends continue, according Cogburn.
Construction plans call for 34,000-SF school building
Mebane’s city council voted unanimously in October 2024 to grant a special use permit allowing construction of the charter school to proceed on the 15.7-acre site near the intersection of West Ten and Rock Quarry roads, about five minutes from the Buckhorn Road exit off I-85/40.
Construction will consist of two phases, based on plans that Hubrich Contracting outlined for Mebane’s city council last fall.
During the first phase, the school will operate out of the 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.
Cogburn said Wednesday that the general timeframe to begin construction of a permanent school building is within the next couple of years, depending on enrollment and acquisition of a school bond to fund construction.
A subsequent phase could include the construction of a gym and a soccer field at Carolina Achieve, Hubrich told the city council in October 2024.
Academics aligned with state standard curriculum
Carolina Achieve will follow the state’s standard curriculum but also 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, Cogburn and founding board chairman John Oxaal said in earlier interviews.
Cogburn reaffirmed for the newspaper this week that, like its traditional public school counterparts, Carolina Achieve, will offer transportation, as well as school meals, including free and reduced-price meals for students whose families qualify.
The charter school will also offer individualized instruction for students who have an Individualized Education Plan (IEP), as well as students who have a 504 plan for disability-related accommodations, Cogburn added.
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One deviation is that Carolina Achieve will begin the new school year earlier than traditional K-12 public schools, on Thursday, August 21, 2025, according to the charter school’s academic calendar for 2025-26. Carolina Achieve will end the school year on Friday, June 5, 2026, or about a week earlier than traditional K-12 public schools are currently allowed. The state’s school calendar law doesn’t apply to public charter schools.
Since 2004, North Carolina’s school calendar law has prohibited the state’s 115 traditional K-12 public school systems from starting the school year before the last Monday in August and from ending the school year later than the Friday closest to June 11. A bill filed earlier this year and cosponsored by Republican state senator Amy Galey, who represents portions of Alamance and Randolph counties in the General Assembly, could change that.
The bill, which remains pending in the General Assembly, would allow N.C. public school systems to start school a week earlier (but no earlier than the Monday closest to August 19) than state law currently allows. It would also require N.C. public school systems to end the school year no later than the Friday before Memorial Day.
Enrollment and financial projections for year one
For the first year of operation, Carolina Achieve is projected to receive approximately $1.8 million in revenue from state and local per-pupil funding and state and federal funding for Exceptional Children’s programming, based on documents provided for the Charter Schools Review Board on Monday.
Those projections include a footnote stating that the revenue projection figures do not guarantee that Carolina Achieve would receive the $1.8 million in revenue for the first year of operation.
Carolina Achieve is estimated to enroll approximately 106 students from Alamance County and 44 students from Orange County in kindergarten through second grade for the 2025-26 school year, based on the financial and enrollment projections provided for the state board.
The charter school’s projected expenditures for year one also total approximately $1.8 million. Of the overall total, $866,780 would go toward salaries and benefits; $886,090 would be used for operational expenses such as utilities, equipment, and insurance, based on the documents presented to the Charter Schools Review Board.
