Alexandria City Public Schools embraced replacing the former Jefferson-Houston K-5 Elementary School with a new PreK-8 School to support growing enrollment and improve academic outcomes. The only school in northern Virginia to earn “Priority” status in 2012, a new Jefferson-Houston offered the opportunity to rebuild both the school and the community support needed to guarantee its success. As part of the intensive planning process, the design team authored a set of Educational Specifications which connected the community’s needs to the school’s innovative PreK-8 program.

Drawing on the high-density setting of the school’s urban site, the Educational Specifications outline a “nexus approach,” wherein people, programs, and services are clustered near each other to maximize resource sharing and reinforce the neighborhood context. An aspirational community school, the new Jefferson-Houston features grade-specific “pods” carefully arranged to support adjacencies between students. These are supplemented by flexible breakout areas for individualized instruction, while shared educational spaces (known as Extended Learning Areas) contribute to a sense of community. Instead of a centralized cafeteria, the school uses a distributed dining approach to integrate the social and educational aspects of mealtime into the learning environment.

A LEED Gold school, the building acts as a teaching tool, encouraging students to participate in the ecological and engineering functions of the building and its surrounding landscape. Outside, sustainable features include on-site storm water management, water efficient landscaping, and various shading strategies that maximize daylight and minimize energy consumption.