Murch meeting tonight on swing space

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is the Intelsat building a possibility? It seems forever like its looking for a lease, it's on the Red Line, and there is good outdoor space.

That was one of the earlier options, but it was going to cost $12m to do it, so they took it off the table.

[Anonymous]

Murch has been slated for renovation for years! How is it that DCPS hasn't figured out the swing space yet?!

They hired a builder, architect etc. But never figured out where the kids would go? Yes it's tough, but this should have been figured out a LONG LONG time ago. Not now right before they break ground. DCPS failed here and now 1400 plus kids are being asks to pay the price. Terrible. I do hope they are kept accountable. Yes Intelstat is expensive, but it's really the fault of DCPS for not figuring anything else out this late in the proces. It sounds like that is the only viable choice and DCPS should be forced to pay it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Murch has been slated for renovation for years! How is it that DCPS hasn't figured out the swing space yet?!

They hired a builder, architect etc. But never figured out where the kids would go? Yes it's tough, but this should have been figured out a LONG LONG time ago. Not now right before they break ground. DCPS failed here and now 1400 plus kids are being asks to pay the price. Terrible. I do hope they are kept accountable. Yes Intelstat is expensive, but it's really the fault of DCPS for not figuring anything else out this late in the proces. It sounds like that is the only viable choice and DCPS should be forced to pay it.

DME failed by not making the tough decision to fixing NW elementary boundaries. DCPS/DGS was left to pick up the pieces.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Murch has been slated for renovation for years! How is it that DCPS hasn't figured out the swing space yet?!

They hired a builder, architect etc. But never figured out where the kids would go? Yes it's tough, but this should have been figured out a LONG LONG time ago. Not now right before they break ground. DCPS failed here and now 1400 plus kids are being asks to pay the price. Terrible. I do hope they are kept accountable. Yes Intelstat is expensive, but it's really the fault of DCPS for not figuring anything else out this late in the proces. It sounds like that is the only viable choice and DCPS should be forced to pay it.

DME failed by not making the tough decision to fixing NW elementary boundaries. DCPS/DGS was left to pick up the pieces.

For the love of all things holy.... shifting the boundaries would not have helped! How many times does this need to be said? Do you think there would be no renovation if the 90+ year old school had 450 instead of 700 kids? Do you think it's all that much easier to find space for 500 than for 700? No, it's not.

[Anonymous]

Here we go again. 13:06, we all know your views. You are not promoting dialog on this issue; you are merely turning reasonable people off your regarding your position and shutting down discussion. You are not helping.

Can you please just step aside and allow concerned parents some space to try to figure out how to achieve the best educational environment for their children over the next two to two and a half years?

[Anonymous]

The school would have to be renovated regardless of boundaries. The point is that DCPS should have done its due diligence BEFORE so we wouldn't be in this "crisis" situation. Now 1 if not 2 schools will be in a terrible situation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The school would have to be renovated regardless of boundaries. The point is that DCPS should have done its due diligence BEFORE so we wouldn't be in this "crisis" situation. Now 1 if not 2 schools will be in a terrible situation.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The school would have to be renovated regardless of boundaries. The point is that DCPS should have done its due diligence BEFORE so we wouldn't be in this "crisis" situation. Now 1 if not 2 schools will be in a terrible situation.

+1

Absolutely - school renovation has nothing to do with population size. Mann, recently modernized much much smaller

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Murch has been slated for renovation for years! How is it that DCPS hasn't figured out the swing space yet?!

They hired a builder, architect etc. But never figured out where the kids would go? Yes it's tough, but this should have been figured out a LONG LONG time ago. Not now right before they break ground. DCPS failed here and now 1400 plus kids are being asks to pay the price. Terrible. I do hope they are kept accountable. Yes Intelstat is expensive, but it's really the fault of DCPS for not figuring anything else out this late in the proces. It sounds like that is the only viable choice and DCPS should be forced to pay it.

DME failed by not making the tough decision to fixing NW elementary boundaries. DCPS/DGS was left to pick up the pieces.

Thank you for the smile on this gray day, you made me think of one of my favorite comic books when I was growing up, where a character is described as being so dumb "that you can stone to death a donkey with well ripe figs before you make him understand something".

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Lafamurch?

Ha!

Though Muryette is also catchy.

Lurch?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here's the breakdown by cost:

Swing Completely on site: 2.5 M. Pros, we are all together, cheap, close to XDay, Cons: very, very close to construction - lots of moving around over the 2.5 year timeline; very limited play space; they haven't even really started to talk to NPS about using vacant lot across Reno. Drop off would be Ellicot with construction entrances on Davenport and Reno.

Swing partly on site; Pre-K and K at Capitol Memorial Church: 3.5 M. Pros...not sure there are any! Okay - good place space. Cons: school is split - especially hard for resource teachers and specialists; classrooms would have to be packed up on weekends! This one seemed the least likely.

Swing at Lafayette: 4.5 M - I think. Pros - already setup, large enough, DCPS controls; Cons - traffic and all those kids at recess and Lafayette families have to wait two more years which we at Murch know is a huge pain, also lots of Murch families walk and/or don't have cars and then hop on metro - will complicate commutes. We also had Lafayette parents (two) not asking questions but taking their turn to ask questions and turning around to lecture the group on why this wouldn't work which really struct the wrong tone. The meeting ran very long and the Murch parents simply wanted their chance to ask questions and give input to DGS. We all understood why Lafayette didn't want this but hearing traffic as an argument was kind of laughable if you ever see Davenport during drop-off with all the folks dropping at Murch and then going on to Deal. We get a lot of cross park traffic headed simply to Deal/Wilson as well.

Swing at UDC: 6M. Pros: large enough for Murch, away from construction - close to Metro; playspace for PreK/K and for bigger. Set off from rest of UDC. Cons: might be secret service issues with all the embassies around - travel to XDay.

There was definite crowd approval for the UDC option. Which of course they presented last. Mary Cheh got up and spoke at the end and said that she thought we should be asking for UDC or relooking at doing 2 level trailers on the Forest Hills baseball field to fit us all there.

Also a fair amount of frustration was expressed that they didn't have the answers to 75% of the questions and they were planning to do a traffic study over winter break and give us an answer on January 12th! There should be a link up on the Murch website at some point today to the presentation and with info on how to comment.

Murch parent here, and I just don't think our traffic (as bad as it is) is comparable to what the Lafayette neighborhood would face with two schools on Lafayette's grounds. Similarly, the Lafayette folks don't understand why swinging on site would be worse for us than it has been for them (at the Tuesday meeting they laughed at the idea that Murch should be worried about construction noise, giving no thought to how much bigger their grounds are).

Let's respect/accept that our swinging on site in their trailers would be a disaster for them (and us) in terms of traffic and safety. And hope that they understand why swinging on site is not feasible for us. I don't see how a pissing match over whose traffic is worse gets us anywhere.

Fair enough, but remember that you need to be comparing our traffic and parking during construction with Davenport essentially closed.

[Anonymous]

The on-site options include an entrance for construction vehicles on Reno. I wonder how that will affect morning and evening rush on Reno? Would they be able to move that entrance to Ellicott if the students were off-site?

[Anonymous]

Slightly off-topic, but was the impact to aftercare discussed at all. What will become of Murch Extended Day and Language Immersion by Capitol Language Services. Both of my kids attend Spanish immersion. If they go to Lafayette or any other "on the table" option, how will they get to the church for aftercare. Or, will that be provided?

[Anonymous]

Ha! We have been on he wait list for Lafayette aftercare for over a year, so don't count in it at Lafayette.

[Anonymous]

I'm trying to understand how a traffic study conducted in late December would reveal anything useful. School's out, people are off from work. UDC is only $3.5 million more than the cheapest solution? Why are they even debating? $3.5? That's like the cost of two houses in those neighborhoods. It's peanuts.

Ok, I'm going to give you and Mary Cheh your argument. Every DCPS in the District, except for upper NW schools, offer PS3. This means that tax payers in-boundary for schools like Murch and Lafayette are getting the least bang for their tax buck when it comes to education spending. Sure, there's the lottery (for public as well as charter) but it is inequitable that Mann, Key, Murch, Stoddert, Janney, Lafeyette don't offer PS3. Yes, PS3 and PK grew out of headstart and was aimed at needy children but it is now considered standard (while not required grades). If I were a tax payer in the Murch or Lafayette districts I would be making this argument. I realize that the schools do not have the physical room to add PS3, but my point is if those schools can't provide PS3 to their constituents the least DCPS could do is spring for the right option for Murch while it undergoes it's much needed renovation.