Murch Boundary Change

[Anonymous]

I wanted to start this as a new thread on the changes to the southern Murch boundary - it seems like on a strict numbers basis, the vast majority of students who are being rezoned are those who live in the apartment buildings on Connecticut. I live in the neighborhood and there just arent' enough single family houses in the proposed change zone to make a noticible difference, particularly with the liberal grandfathering that was promised (and will have to continue with younger sibs, etc.). Tons of families live in those buildings and if lets say 6 of those large buildings move to the Hearst baoundary, so go those families. So if the buildings on one half of connecticut from Chesapeake to albemarle get re-zoned, the school is going to lose a good chunk of the middle class families who are in-bounds as opposed to the upper class families living in forest hills, chevy chase, etc. This just doesn't sit well with me and I haven't heard anyone else talk about this. I'm wondering whether it has come up at any of the meetings or if others have thoughts about it.

[Anonymous]

Abby intimated about the Murch boundary change at the Anacostia meeting on Saturday (she talked about it without saying the school name). This is my interpretation of what she said:

Some ES boundaries looks strange with the school really close to the edge of a boundary instead of closer to the center b/c DME is following two principles.

Top priority is changing as few families as possible from their existing boundary.

Secondary priority is proximity.

So, because the Murch boundary has to shrink by necessity, they shrank it "lopsided" to the south, lopping off the minimum number they need to move to Hearst instead of making the boundary more centered, affecting homes in the entire neighborhood. Left unsaid is that some of those families on the east side would have had to move to Shepherd or some other EOTP school....can you imagine the fucking outcry then?

So basically, that one corner is taking the "hit" so that the rest of the neighborhood doesn't have to.

[Anonymous]

But the corner taking the hit is the corner with the most SES diversity in the school boundary!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:But the corner taking the hit is the corner with the most SES diversity in the school boundary!

And? They will go to Hearst now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Abby intimated about the Murch boundary change at the Anacostia meeting on Saturday (she talked about it without saying the school name). This is my interpretation of what she said:

Some ES boundaries looks strange with the school really close to the edge of a boundary instead of closer to the center b/c DME is following two principles.

Top priority is changing as few families as possible from their existing boundary.

Secondary priority is proximity.

So, because the Murch boundary has to shrink by necessity, they shrank it "lopsided" to the south, lopping off the minimum number they need to move to Hearst instead of making the boundary more centered, affecting homes in the entire neighborhood. Left unsaid is that some of those families on the east side would have had to move to Shepherd or some other EOTP school....can you imagine the fucking outcry then?

So basically, that one corner is taking the "hit" so that the rest of the neighborhood doesn't have to.

if you look at the Murch zone, the area that otherwise should have been rezoned was not on the east (the park is the border, and there are almost no homes in the park), but the upper corned on the west bordering Western Avenue. but the kids would have had to be moved to Janney or Lafayette, two very large schools that are also overcrowded and already with a super high IB population.

I fully agree with OP that this change is very detrimental to Murch because it is going to loose diversity, which is one of the reasons we love the school and decided to stay even after we moved IB for Lafayette. we rented for years in one of the buldings on Connecticut (further up, not the ones affected by the rezoning proposal). in the building there were several families with two kids, like us, that were renting an apartment because they wanted to live in the area and send their kids to Murch but could not afford to buy a home. we also know many families who own and live in apartments, some affected by the proposal. the wide variety of housing in the Murch district is what make Murch a great place for all kids to be of all the JKLMM schools

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Abby intimated about the Murch boundary change at the Anacostia meeting on Saturday (she talked about it without saying the school name). This is my interpretation of what she said:

Some ES boundaries looks strange with the school really close to the edge of a boundary instead of closer to the center b/c DME is following two principles.

Top priority is changing as few families as possible from their existing boundary.

Secondary priority is proximity.

So, because the Murch boundary has to shrink by necessity, they shrank it "lopsided" to the south, lopping off the minimum number they need to move to Hearst instead of making the boundary more centered, affecting homes in the entire neighborhood. Left unsaid is that some of those families on the east side would have had to move to Shepherd or some other EOTP school....can you imagine the fucking outcry then?

So basically, that one corner is taking the "hit" so that the rest of the neighborhood doesn't have to.

if you look at the Murch zone, the area that otherwise should have been rezoned was not on the east (the park is the border, and there are almost no homes in the park), but the upper corned on the west bordering Western Avenue. but the kids would have had to be moved to Janney or Lafayette, two very large schools that are also overcrowded and already with a super high IB population.

I fully agree with OP that this change is very detrimental to Murch because it is going to loose diversity, which is one of the reasons we love the school and decided to stay even after we moved IB for Lafayette. we rented for years in one of the buldings on Connecticut (further up, not the ones affected by the rezoning proposal). in the building there were several families with two kids, like us, that were renting an apartment because they wanted to live in the area and send their kids to Murch but could not afford to buy a home. we also know many families who own and live in apartments, some affected by the proposal. the wide variety of housing in the Murch district is what make Murch a great place for all kids to be of all the JKLMM schools

You just explained why they couldn't come from the west and the east. Where else were they going to come from?

[Anonymous]

Connecticut Ave is the eastern boundary of Murch not the southern…js…

[Anonymous]

Is there no way the Murch renovation could expand to accommodate more kids? Adding another level seems like an easier solution than coming up with a really convoluted boundary change (that moves families two blocks from the school out of zone and still fails to deal with the overcrowding if the 10% set aside is implemented.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:But the corner taking the hit is the corner with the most SES diversity in the school boundary!

And? They will go to Hearst now.

Yes, but at the expense of Murch, which will become less diverse. Some of us actually think diversity is a good thing.

[Anonymous]

And if the apartment buildings remain in boundary for murch, the rezoning of 4 blocks (Alton - Chesapeake) between Nebraska and Connecticut doens't make any sense because it wont have a meaningful impact on overcrowding. I just think this was a poorly thought out boundary change - both for the rezoned families and for Murch.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:But the corner taking the hit is the corner with the most SES diversity in the school boundary!

And? They will go to Hearst now.

Yes, but at the expense of Murch, which will become less diverse. Some of us actually think diversity is a good thing.

Others of us in the Murch boundary are more concerned with persistent overcrowding, although having a slightly diverse student body is a nice-to-have.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Abby intimated about the Murch boundary change at the Anacostia meeting on Saturday (she talked about it without saying the school name). This is my interpretation of what she said:

Some ES boundaries looks strange with the school really close to the edge of a boundary instead of closer to the center b/c DME is following two principles.

Top priority is changing as few families as possible from their existing boundary.

Secondary priority is proximity.

So, because the Murch boundary has to shrink by necessity, they shrank it "lopsided" to the south, lopping off the minimum number they need to move to Hearst instead of making the boundary more centered, affecting homes in the entire neighborhood. Left unsaid is that some of those families on the east side would have had to move to Shepherd or some other EOTP school....can you imagine the fucking outcry then?

So basically, that one corner is taking the "hit" so that the rest of the neighborhood doesn't have to.

I would guess this is speaking to both Murch and Janney. Murch, Janney and Hearst are all quite close together and the boundaries of Murcha nd Janney span outwards toward the border of the city.

I am surprised they did not give more consideration to moving some Murch families to Lafayette. Yes, Lafayette is very large but my understanding is that its demographics are shifting over time so that its number of elementary school aged children is moving down as those within the Murch and Janney are going up. I think this has to do with the age of the population that is moving out of households, making them available for young families.

[Anonymous]

I think part of the mismatch in perspectives here is that the DME /DCPS is trying to look at the overall area of Murch / Janney/ Hearst as a contiguous neighborhood and attempting to balance the issues of:

- overall capacity in light of projected trends
- proximity/walkability
- diversity (both IB and thru OOB potential seats)

across the entire neighborhood vs. as if each school is its own isolated universe.

when you take that perspective I think it is harder to argue against some moderate shifting of the southern boundaries to accommodate some more neighborhood kids in another neighborhood school (Hearst)

with Murch at over 30% OOB today I also think its hard to argue that losing a few IB blocks does a ton of damage to the diversity the school currently enjoys.

[Anonymous]

I think Murch is close to 90% in bounds... there is a typo on the DCPS stats page that says it's 66% or so, but this is apparently wrong (from what I've heard). The OOB kids seem to be in the older grades or siblings (hardly any new OOB kids are accepted now it seems).

For those who are against the proposed boundary change, I am wondering, what are the alternative proposals? Here are the ones I have heard... are there any others?

- shift northern Murch boundary to Lafayette instead, where younger population is not growing as quickly
- renovate Murch to a large enough size to accommodate the IB population
- status quo for now, and revisit the boundary issue after the decision is made about the capacity of a renovated Murch*

*logic being that it doesn't make sense to change the boundary before deciding how big the school is going to be--incidentally I don't understand how you allocate a budget for a renovation prior to determining this--doesn't seem fair somehow--shouldn't there be a consideration of the per-student cost when budgeting, and how can you do this without knowing how many students the school will have? the whole process seems backwards and overdue... but this is another topic...

[Anonymous]

I think you'd better go with a big renovation (at least), because I don't think moving the boundary as proposed is going to do much of anything to reduce overcrowding.

As an earlier poster pointed out, most of the kids affected by the boundary change are in the buildings on Connecticut (most of which are rentals). Compared with single-family homes, there is a lot of apartment stock still in-bounds for Murch, and that apartment stock turns over a lot more frequently than single-family homes. But, there's reason to doubt the DME/DCPS is taking the number, turnover, and fungibility of these apartments into account.

If you recall, last year the DCPS projections for Murch wildly understated this year's school population. Turns out, that's because DCPS is looking at historical data. Historically, families living in-bounds for Murch overwhelmingly lived in single-family homes. DCPS blew the projections because it saw in its data no precedent for the fact that these days, many school-aged families will live in apartments if that's what it takes to be in-bounds for Murch. But, as everyone in the neighborhood knows, there are now lots (and lots and lots) of apartment-dwelling families at Murch.

Change the boundary, and you'll just change the addresses of the buildings where those families rent. Predicted net impact of boundary change on Murch overcrowding: close to nil.