Decision on Murch swing space

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think if it is going to be UDC it would be announced and every one would breathe a sigh of relief and DCPS would sit back and bask in the win. That is not happening so I think it is a negative. But I am a doomsday kind do person.

UDC thinks that Ward 3 doesn't really want them in Upper NW and so they have little interest in helping the neighborhood.

UDC is correct. Show of hands: Any homeowner in Ward 3 ever take a class or use any UDC facilities?

Master Gardeners do.

[Anonymous]

What private school sports team will be using the UDC soccer field?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Murch is a fantastic school and I'm sure my child will be very happy with his teachers and classmates wherever they are located. With that said, I have absolutely no confidence that the construction will be sufficiently advanced that children can safely occupy the renovate old building/trailers by August 2017, with adequate play areas, especially since, once they move the kids back onto the Murch site in 2017, the construction will probably slow down. This sounds like they are sneakily moving the "swing on site" option back despite the almost universal opposition to that plan and it also very much sounds like the soccer fields' renovations is being made a priority over the education and wellbeing of 650 kids. Additionally, DCPS/DGS has been consistently opaque and unforthcoming about their plans for Murch, to the extent of sharing information with Lafayette before they shared it with the principal of Murch, which makes me doubt pretty much everything they say. They've had to be dragged virtually kicking and screaming to make every single decision about this renovation, and they seem to present options at the last minute that were never discussed at any of the meetings I attended (such as the one year in one space, one year in another option.) So forgive me for having almost no confidence in their planned timeline or in their guarantees that the kids would be able to play outside in the middle of construction.

To reiterate, the school is great, and we're there till the end of elementary, but parents, teachers and staff deserve a lot better than they've gotten from the organs of DC government so far!

I don't think the opposition to swinging onsite was quite as universal as people who were deeply, loudly opposed to it thought. I spoke to lots of people who were open to it but would say things like, "I don't think it's a terrible idea. I'm not sure why some people are so opposed to it considering the lack of options."

And while I think DCPS/DGS's communication and process has been abysmal, I also think we need to move on from the whole "they told Lafayette first" thing. Seriously. It makes us sound like such whiners.

[Anonymous]

I have to laugh a little. Murch parents showed themselves to be a little bat-$h1t crazy during the boundary commission and are continuing that fine tradition today.

Murch desperately needed renovation and it would be great to have the perfection solution. But this behavior just makes the rest of the city (including the rest of Ward 3) think you are nuts.

Hope you have a successful renovation. You deserve a wonderful new space, and a safe and comfortable swing space in the meantime.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have to laugh a little. Murch parents showed themselves to be a little bat-$h1t crazy during the boundary commission and are continuing that fine tradition today.

Murch desperately needed renovation and it would be great to have the perfection solution. But this behavior just makes the rest of the city (including the rest of Ward 3) think you are nuts.

Hope you have a successful renovation. You deserve a wonderful new space, and a safe and comfortable swing space in the meantime.

It is not polite to get all of your information from DCUM and form ill opinions of people who aren't even speaking on here. It is clear that 99% of this thread isn't even Murch people, save 2 or 3 at the very end. And if you think Murch has ever expected or asked for perfection, you don't know Murch.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What private school sports team will be using the UDC soccer field?

Burke and Maret, plus UDC and Stoddert Soccer.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think if it is going to be UDC it would be announced and every one would breathe a sigh of relief and DCPS would sit back and bask in the win. That is not happening so I think it is a negative. But I am a doomsday kind do person.

UDC thinks that Ward 3 doesn't really want them in Upper NW and so they have little interest in helping the neighborhood.

UDC is correct. Show of hands: Any homeowner in Ward 3 ever take a class or use any UDC facilities?

Master Gardeners do.

+1. I know several people who did it and would happily do it myself if I had time

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What private school sports team will be using the UDC soccer field?

Burke and Maret, plus UDC and Stoddert Soccer.

I'm guessing they had a contract. Not as simple as placing this ahead of 600+ students, many of whom are or have been part of Stoddert soccer.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What private school sports team will be using the UDC soccer field?

Burke and Maret, plus UDC and Stoddert Soccer.

I'm guessing they had a contract. Not as simple as placing this ahead of 600+ students, many of whom are or have been part of Stoddert soccer.

Why should we guess? We should have access to that information. DCPS did not know whether this was a contract issue when the SIT asked them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What private school sports team will be using the UDC soccer field?

Burke and Maret, plus UDC and Stoddert Soccer.

I'm guessing they had a contract. Not as simple as placing this ahead of 600+ students, many of whom are or have been part of Stoddert soccer.

Why should we guess? We should have access to that information. DCPS did not know whether this was a contract issue when the SIT asked them.

Well maybe they do now...honestly I'm not sure why UDC should be forced to give up its sports fields to an elementary school at all. The Firebirds will be unable to use their home field now and the space will be very expensive to grade and returf after being covered by trailers for a year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What private school sports team will be using the UDC soccer field?

Burke and Maret, plus UDC and Stoddert Soccer.

I'm guessing they had a contract. Not as simple as placing this ahead of 600+ students, many of whom are or have been part of Stoddert soccer.

Why should we guess? We should have access to that information. DCPS did not know whether this was a contract issue when the SIT asked them.

Well maybe they do now...honestly I'm not sure why UDC should be forced to give up its sports fields to an elementary school at all. The Firebirds will be unable to use their home field now and the space will be very expensive to grade and returf after being covered by trailers for a year.

UDC has not used those fields in awhile. They haven't been able to and they haven't had money to turf them. There was a trailer complex built there for the Chinese Embassy and then geothermal was put in on one of the fields. So having this trailer complex built there for a year or two isn't what will mess up the land. Meanwhile, UDC has been given access to DCPS fields for the last few years to accommodate them and would continue to have that access if Murch used the space.

[Anonymous]

See the recent post on the HSA website for the various issues with this new plan.

http://murchschool.org/dcps-announces-swing-space-decision-one-year-at-udc-then-onsite/

The whole situation is deplorable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:See the recent post on the HSA website for the various issues with this new plan.

http://murchschool.org/dcps-announces-swing-space-decision-one-year-at-udc-then-onsite/

The whole situation is deplorable.

Why is it so deplorable? It sounds fine to me. I think some people just like to complain for the sake of getting attention.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:See the recent post on the HSA website for the various issues with this new plan.

http://murchschool.org/dcps-announces-swing-space-decision-one-year-at-udc-then-onsite/

The whole situation is deplorable.

Why is it so deplorable? It sounds fine to me. I think some people just like to complain for the sake of getting attention.

Did you even read the link? There are so many problems with this plan, the least of which are all the unknowns regarding budget, logistics, etc. This lack of information and diligence is directly attributable to DCPS's absolute incompetence handling the swing space search. And the fact that this new option was sprung on the Murch SIT literally hours before the final decision was made is simply the icing on the cake.

But, yes, we at Murch are complaining not because we care deeply about the learning environments our kids will be in for the next two years, but because we want attention. We have nothing better to do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:See the recent post on the HSA website for the various issues with this new plan.

http://murchschool.org/dcps-announces-swing-space-decision-one-year-at-udc-then-onsite/

The whole situation is deplorable.

Why is it so deplorable? It sounds fine to me. I think some people just like to complain for the sake of getting attention.

I"m one of the Murch PPs above who has said that this solution doesn't seem so bad...but the HSA note certainly raises a lot of important issues, primarily:

Increased/unknown cost: No one can say how much this will cost, and cost comes out of the renovation budget. IF it costs more than the 6.5M that was anticipated for UDC originally, how much more? What are we going to lose as a result?

Two complete campus moves and a third major move within the campus: Expensive, hugely time-consuming, likely quite disruptive to the beginning and end of each school year for 2-3 years. DCPS and DGS previously said they didn't want to do multiple moves...and then came up with this without explaining how they're going to address these issues.

Timeline concerns: Everything has to run like clockwork for this to work, and it could extend timeline overall.

FAilure to address parking and safety concerns at either site: Longstanding concerns, still no plan.

I think the overarching concern is that DCPS and DGS just came up with this solution three days ago and doesn't actually seem to have thought it through. And it's so complex that a lack of planning and forethought makes it almost certain that something big will go wrong.