Schools and growth in MoCo

[Anonymous]

Here's are the first two parts of an informative series of blog posts about schools and growth in Montgomery County.

https://montgomeryplanning.org/blog-design/2019/01/schools-and-growth-part-one-impact-taxes-and-school-construction/ (impact taxes and school construction)

https://montgomeryplanning.org/blog-design/2019/02/schools-and-growth-part-two-student-generation-rates-and-children-who-live-in-apartments/ (student generation and children who live in apartments)

Next: enrollment projections and the relationship between school overcrowding and development

Some key points:

-In Montgomery County, school impact taxes are calculated to cover 120 percent of the cost of each additional seat generated by a new housing unit. In principle, at least, this percentage means that new development pays for more than its share of the capital costs associated with building schools

-Montgomery County has the second highest school impact payment of any jurisdiction in the region

-The courts have ruled that the government can charge developers for infrastructure only to the extent that the fees imposed bear a reasonable relationship to the costs generated by development

-Every other year, Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) provides the Planning Department with a dataset that includes the address and grade of every MCPS student (with all other identifying information scrubbed from the dataset). The Planning Department then cross-references this information with parcel data that identifies the type of housing at the relevant address (single-family home, townhouse, high-rise multifamily, etc.).

-Using this information, the Planning Department calculates how many elementary, middle and high school students are generated by different types of housing across different parts of the county. When the rates were last calculated using 2016 enrollment data, housing type information was matched to the addresses of 99.1 percent of the more than 159,000 MCPS students. This means that the resulting generation rates are based on a nearly-complete picture of exactly how many kids live in each category of housing across the entire county.

-Attached single-family housing, commonly referred to as townhomes, generates the most students per unit – more than single-family detached houses.

-Mid-rise multifamily buildings tend to be relatively older stock with a relatively larger proportion of multi-bedroom units, but they still have a smaller number of schoolchildren per unit than single-family dwellings.

-The number of students in high-rise apartments and condominiums, however, is even lower. For every 10 residential units in a high-rise building, only 1.4 students are enrolled in our public schools. Each of these units gets charged $6,791 in school impact taxes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Here's are the first two parts of an informative series of blog posts about schools and growth in Montgomery County.

https://montgomeryplanning.org/blog-design/2019/01/schools-and-growth-part-one-impact-taxes-and-school-construction/ (impact taxes and school construction)

https://montgomeryplanning.org/blog-design/2019/02/schools-and-growth-part-two-student-generation-rates-and-children-who-live-in-apartments/ (student generation and children who live in apartments)

Next: enrollment projections and the relationship between school overcrowding and development

Some key points:

-In Montgomery County, school impact taxes are calculated to cover 120 percent of the cost of each additional seat generated by a new housing unit. In principle, at least, this percentage means that new development pays for more than its share of the capital costs associated with building schools

-Montgomery County has the second highest school impact payment of any jurisdiction in the region

-The courts have ruled that the government can charge developers for infrastructure only to the extent that the fees imposed bear a reasonable relationship to the costs generated by development

-Every other year, Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) provides the Planning Department with a dataset that includes the address and grade of every MCPS student (with all other identifying information scrubbed from the dataset). The Planning Department then cross-references this information with parcel data that identifies the type of housing at the relevant address (single-family home, townhouse, high-rise multifamily, etc.).

-Using this information, the Planning Department calculates how many elementary, middle and high school students are generated by different types of housing across different parts of the county. When the rates were last calculated using 2016 enrollment data, housing type information was matched to the addresses of 99.1 percent of the more than 159,000 MCPS students. This means that the resulting generation rates are based on a nearly-complete picture of exactly how many kids live in each category of housing across the entire county.

-Attached single-family housing, commonly referred to as townhomes, generates the most students per unit – more than single-family detached houses.

-Mid-rise multifamily buildings tend to be relatively older stock with a relatively larger proportion of multi-bedroom units, but they still have a smaller number of schoolchildren per unit than single-family dwellings.

-The number of students in high-rise apartments and condominiums, however, is even lower. For every 10 residential units in a high-rise building, only 1.4 students are enrolled in our public schools. Each of these units gets charged $6,791 in school impact taxes.

There is NO way that is true. Have you seen the hordes of kids getting on the bus near the Twinbrook Metro station where all the new apartments have been built? Or in Germantown? Not necessarily high rises in Germantown, but there are lots of kids living in apartments and condos in Montgomery County. Plus, some residency fraud thrown in there makes it tough to actually estimate how many kids really will come from a new development.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

There is NO way that is true. Have you seen the hordes of kids getting on the bus near the Twinbrook Metro station where all the new apartments have been built? Or in Germantown? Not necessarily high rises in Germantown, but there are lots of kids living in apartments and condos in Montgomery County. Plus, some residency fraud thrown in there makes it tough to actually estimate how many kids really will come from a new development.

Which do you think is the more reliable source of information?

A. A dataset that matches the address of 99.1% of MCPS students to the type of housing at that address.
B. Driving by a couple of big apartment buildings when it's time for kids to get on or off the bus.

I'm going with A.

[Anonymous]

Re the residency fraud: the idea generally on DCUM is that students who actually live in detached houses with yards in ["bad" neighborhood] are registered with MCPS as living in apartments in ["good" neighborhoods].

In that case, the Planning Department generation rates are OVERESTIMATES of the number of students a given apartment unit will produce. The Planning Department is counting the apartments as generating students who don't actually live there.

Maybe think about that before you say that residency fraud invalidates the Planning Department generation rates.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

There is NO way that is true. Have you seen the hordes of kids getting on the bus near the Twinbrook Metro station where all the new apartments have been built? Or in Germantown? Not necessarily high rises in Germantown, but there are lots of kids living in apartments and condos in Montgomery County. Plus, some residency fraud thrown in there makes it tough to actually estimate how many kids really will come from a new development.

Which do you think is the more reliable source of information?

A. A dataset that matches the address of 99.1% of MCPS students to the type of housing at that address.
B. Driving by a couple of big apartment buildings when it's time for kids to get on or off the bus.

I'm going with A.

Yeah, I'm going with A too.

[Anonymous]

A quick look at school directory tells a different story than 1.4 students out of 10 units. I am talking about Beall ES here.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A quick look at school directory tells a different story than 1.4 students out of 10 units. I am talking about Beall ES here.

How do you get that from "a quick look at the directory"? You'd have to tally up which students live in high-rise buildings, and calculate against the total number of residential units. Which is what the study did.

[Anonymous]

Is this some sort of developer-sponsored blog trying to lobby for lower impact assessments?

And are you taking into account not the current population but the projected population in apartment buildings over the next 10 years?

Because schools are getting really, really crowded, and suggesting that MoCo has been overestimating the impact of development on school populations is frankly hilarious!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is this some sort of developer-sponsored blog trying to lobby for lower impact assessments?

And are you taking into account not the current population but the projected population in apartment buildings over the next 10 years?

Because schools are getting really, really crowded, and suggesting that MoCo has been overestimating the impact of development on school populations is frankly hilarious!

No, it's the Planning Department's blog. The posts are written by the head of the Planning Department, who is also the chairman of the Planning Board. And he doesn't take a position on whether impact fees should be higher or lower. If you read the linked blog posts, then you would know this.

[Anonymous]

My recollection is that the planning board admitted they had undercounted kids in apt buildings so I’d want to know the time scales on that matching.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here's are the first two parts of an informative series of blog posts about schools and growth in Montgomery County.

https://montgomeryplanning.org/blog-design/2019/01/schools-and-growth-part-one-impact-taxes-and-school-construction/ (impact taxes and school construction)

https://montgomeryplanning.org/blog-design/2019/02/schools-and-growth-part-two-student-generation-rates-and-children-who-live-in-apartments/ (student generation and children who live in apartments)

Next: enrollment projections and the relationship between school overcrowding and development

Some key points:

-In Montgomery County, school impact taxes are calculated to cover 120 percent of the cost of each additional seat generated by a new housing unit. In principle, at least, this percentage means that new development pays for more than its share of the capital costs associated with building schools

-Montgomery County has the second highest school impact payment of any jurisdiction in the region

-The courts have ruled that the government can charge developers for infrastructure only to the extent that the fees imposed bear a reasonable relationship to the costs generated by development

-Every other year, Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) provides the Planning Department with a dataset that includes the address and grade of every MCPS student (with all other identifying information scrubbed from the dataset). The Planning Department then cross-references this information with parcel data that identifies the type of housing at the relevant address (single-family home, townhouse, high-rise multifamily, etc.).

-Using this information, the Planning Department calculates how many elementary, middle and high school students are generated by different types of housing across different parts of the county. When the rates were last calculated using 2016 enrollment data, housing type information was matched to the addresses of 99.1 percent of the more than 159,000 MCPS students. This means that the resulting generation rates are based on a nearly-complete picture of exactly how many kids live in each category of housing across the entire county.

-Attached single-family housing, commonly referred to as townhomes, generates the most students per unit – more than single-family detached houses.

-Mid-rise multifamily buildings tend to be relatively older stock with a relatively larger proportion of multi-bedroom units, but they still have a smaller number of schoolchildren per unit than single-family dwellings.

-The number of students in high-rise apartments and condominiums, however, is even lower. For every 10 residential units in a high-rise building, only 1.4 students are enrolled in our public schools. Each of these units gets charged $6,791 in school impact taxes.

There is NO way that is true. Have you seen the hordes of kids getting on the bus near the Twinbrook Metro station where all the new apartments have been built? Or in Germantown? Not necessarily high rises in Germantown, but there are lots of kids living in apartments and condos in Montgomery County. Plus, some residency fraud thrown in there makes it tough to actually estimate how many kids really will come from a new development.

here's an opposite view - my parents live in the Condo building at Pike & Rose. There is not one kid that lives in the building. They have about 100 apartments in the building.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My recollection is that the planning board admitted they had undercounted kids in apt buildings so I’d want to know the time scales on that matching.

2016 enrollment data. It says so in the OP and in the posts.

[Anonymous]

We have an apartment complex that feeds into our ES and there are dozens of kids who live there. Our Focus ES does outreach there.

Highly unlikely that it’s 1.4 kids per ten units. Many families that live in the apartments are from other countries and have more than two kids.

Maybe in the past that has been true (1.4 kids per 10 units) but with changing demographics and experience some housing, that is not going to continue.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is this some sort of developer-sponsored blog trying to lobby for lower impact assessments?

And are you taking into account not the current population but the projected population in apartment buildings over the next 10 years?

Because schools are getting really, really crowded, and suggesting that MoCo has been overestimating the impact of development on school populations is frankly hilarious!

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We have an apartment complex that feeds into our ES and there are dozens of kids who live there. Our Focus ES does outreach there.

Highly unlikely that it’s 1.4 kids per ten units. Many families that live in the apartments are from other countries and have more than two kids.

Maybe in the past that has been true (1.4 kids per 10 units) but with changing demographics and experience some housing, that is not going to continue.

Blog post: provides actual data.
Responses on DCUM: Nuh uh, because [anecdotes].