Lincoln Heights Magnet Elementary School was recently named a 2024 Merit School of Distinction. With its reputation for supporting academic growth, Lincoln Heights’ faculty deserves the award. However, it wasn’t that long ago that the school was struggling to remake itself with a new magnet program and a building renovation project to help improve learning through hands-on methods.

In 2008, Lincoln Heights’ magnet program was deemed no longer necessary for the school’s success and was subsequently dropped. As a result, the school’s enrollment and test scores dropped drastically. Over the same period, neighboring schools grew proportionately with the population of nearby Fuquay-Varina. To revitalize the school, faculty decided to try a new magnet program called Environmental Connections. The new program instructs students through an environmental lens and encourages them to connect with the natural world to learn to be good scholars and citizens. For the new program to succeed, the school required upgraded facilities that could support the new nature-based, hands-on learning methods. Alpha & Omega Group (A&O) was selected as part of a team to design the changes and repairs to the school.

Lincoln Height’s enterance after roadway and site improvements

A&O headed the design of the master site plan which included improvements such as a paved running track, new playground, outdoor learning space, and even a game court. To keep the focus on the environment, we designed these improvements using sustainable erosion control and modern stormwater management methods. This included widening the roadway leading to the school to make room for a bicycle lane, and improving the bus parking and student drop-off process. The result was a modern building with safe, accessible features, and an updated site design.

While site improvement was A&O’s main task, we also helped develop outdoor stations that offer opportunities for hands-on learning. One of our most compelling contributions is a dry retention pond that provides stormwater management and hands-on learning experiences about how water affects our state. The A&O team created a “riverbed” of larger rocks, simulating mountains, to mimic water flowing through the western mountains. This water flows through increasingly smaller rocks meant to be the coastal region. The water flows “downstream” to the storm drain and enters a bioretention pond that represents the ocean. The soil mixture in the bioretention pond removes pollutants contained in surface runoff the same way that rivers purify our water. This “Mountains to the Sea” design won the ACEC 2020 Grand Award for innovative stormwater design. The system is still in place today, helping students learn difficult concepts like how stormwater affects the regions of our state, how rivers and tributaries naturally purify water, and how the cycle renews itself repeatedly.

Today, Lincoln Heights is an award-winning institution that was featured on the NC Museum of Natural Science’s Lunchtime Discovery program as recently as April of 2024. Alpha & Omega Group is proud to have been able to contribute not only to the revitalization of the school, but also to a program that teaches the virtues of water resources Stewardship alongside their lessons. We hope the program continues to teach children these virtues for many years to come.

Visit our project page and our roadway page to learn more about the Lincoln Heights project!