Prince William County, Virginia, cut the ribbon on the new Occoquan Elementary School this week, celebrating a yearslong effort to create a modern replacement for one of the district’s oldest school buildings.
The site is the school system’s first net-zero campus, using solar energy from the roof and avoiding reliance on the grid. The new building, the county said, could increase student capacity by over 200 kids.
The new building is steps away from the old elementary school, which Superintendent LaTanya McDade said is the oldest school building in the county. It has been in place for nearly a century.
The new elementary school welcomed students for the first time at the start of the school year.
“There’s a ton of research available that shows that the spaces in which kids learn impact their ability to achieve,” McDade told WTOP. “When a student walks into a school building, what they see tells them whether or not the adults and the people there actually care about them being in school.”
The $60.9 million project includes a rooftop outdoor classroom, Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics lab, an HVAC mechanical system that uses geothermal wells and an emphasis on natural light.
The school system aimed to have its first net zero school by 2025, McDade said.
“It’s a cool place where you can just come and learn and be free of all your worries,” said Larry Sharpe, a student at Occoquan Elementary.
His mom, Natasha Sharpe, was a student in the old building and compared the new facility to a college campus.
“(A) completely different from this building,” she said. “Definitely smaller.”
Neha Sharma, a parent of a first and fifth grader, said the old campus has fewer classrooms and smaller spaces, but the new one has advanced technology and a large library.
“It’s been a great place and one of the best schools in Virginia,” Sharma said of the campus.
The outdoor classroom, county leaders said, offers a space for reading, writing, math or other lessons. The music and strings room has unique acoustic features and offers a glimpse at many of the school’s solar panels.
“We have each of the floors representing different aspects of energy, conservation, sustainability,” School Board Chairman Babur Lateef said. “We have a room where students can go in and actually see in real time where the energy is going to be drawn from, whether it’s from solar or geothermal, how much it’s coming in, and what it’s doing, and where that’s powering.”
Mary Alexander, who worked in the county for over three decades, said from the outside, the new site “looked like this humongous building.”
“I couldn’t imagine it being that big. It looks like a huge high school,” Alexander said.
Once the old school site is finished being demolished, it will be transformed into fields for students to use.
“It is important for students to have safe and supportive learning environments,” McDade said. “The facilities they learn in matter.”
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