Most of Murrayville feeds schools that carried a C on the state report card, with one B on the eastern edge and one D on the western edge, so the grade you get depends on which street you buy on. Three attendance lines cross this neighborhood, which means the address decides the answer more than the neighborhood name does.
We get this question from buyers who have already decided Murrayville is the right price. It is one of the last parts of New Hanover County where a family can buy a three bedroom house with a yard and still be downtown in under twenty minutes, and the natural next question is what the schools look like. The honest answer is that they look like most of New Hanover County: middling grades, uneven growth, and a few schools pulling ahead of the others.
What makes Murrayville different from a neighborhood with one school zone is the geography. The Murrayville neighborhood guide we maintain samples the New Hanover County Schools 2026 to 2027 zone maps across the Census boundary, and three separate elementary lines plus a middle school line plus a high school line all pass through it. Two houses a quarter mile apart can feed different schools at two of those three levels.
Which schools does a Murrayville address actually feed?
At the elementary level, about 72 percent of the neighborhood is zoned to Murrayville Elementary at 225 Mabee Way, which sits inside the boundary rather than a drive away. The edges split: roughly 14 percent to John J. Blair Elementary on the west side, about 11 percent to Porters Neck Elementary on the east, and a sliver of about 2 percent to Castle Hayne Elementary to the north.
Middle school is simpler. About 88 percent feeds Emsley A. Trask Middle at 2900 North College Road, and the northern and eastern edge, roughly 12 percent, feeds Holly Shelter Middle. High school is simpler still: about 94 percent feeds Emsley A. Laney High at 2700 North College Road, with a southern slice going to New Hanover High downtown.
- Murrayville Elementary: C, score 66, met its growth target North Carolina School Report Cards, 2025 grades, read October 17, 2026
- John J. Blair Elementary: D, score 51, did not meet growth North Carolina School Report Cards, 2025 grades, read October 17, 2026
- Porters Neck Elementary: B, score 75, met growth North Carolina School Report Cards, 2025 grades, read October 17, 2026
- Castle Hayne Elementary: C, score 68, met growth North Carolina School Report Cards, 2025 grades, read October 17, 2026
- Emsley A. Trask Middle: C, score 61, did not meet growth North Carolina School Report Cards, 2025 grades, read October 17, 2026
- Holly Shelter Middle: C, score 61, met growth North Carolina School Report Cards, 2025 grades, read October 17, 2026
- Emsley A. Laney High: C, score 62, did not meet growth North Carolina School Report Cards, 2025 grades, read October 17, 2026
- New Hanover High: C, score 56, did not meet growth North Carolina School Report Cards, 2025 grades, read October 17, 2026
What does a C actually tell you, and what does it hide?
North Carolina builds the school performance grade from two parts: 80 percent achievement, meaning how many students scored proficient on state tests, and 20 percent growth, meaning how much progress students made over the year. Because achievement carries four fifths of the weight, the letter grade tracks closely with the income of the families who live in the attendance zone. A school can teach a year and a half of material and still show a C if it started behind.
That is why we tell buyers to read the growth flag next to the letter. In the Murrayville zones, Murrayville Elementary, Porters Neck Elementary, Castle Hayne Elementary and Holly Shelter Middle all met their growth targets in 2025, while Blair, Trask, Laney and New Hanover High did not. Two schools in this set carry the same C and the same score of 61, Trask and Holly Shelter, and only one of them met growth. The letter alone would not have told you that.
The second thing a letter hides is size. Laney High is one of the largest high schools in the county, which has real consequences in both directions: more Advanced Placement sections, more sports, more clubs, and also more students competing for a counselor’s time. Families coming from a small district in the Northeast or the Ohio Valley are often surprised by the scale before they are surprised by the grade.
Price context matters here too. Our New Hanover County market update puts the county median sale price at $464,000 for the three months ending September 2026, down 1.3 percent year over year, at 61 days on market. Murrayville sells below that: the 38 active houses and townhomes with a Murrayville address ran $296,500 to $859,900 with a median asking price of $369,950, per the Coldwell Banker Murraysville listings page read October 17, 2026. You are buying middle-of-the-county schools at a below-median county price, which is the trade this neighborhood offers. If schools are your first filter rather than your second, our guide to the best neighborhoods in Wilmington sorts the area by what each one is actually good at.
Does buying for a school zone work in New Hanover County?
Less reliably than buyers expect. New Hanover County Schools has redrawn attendance lines before, and the district’s own board agenda packets are where that work shows up first. If you are paying a premium for a specific elementary zone, you are buying a line that the board can move.
There is also a practical wrinkle specific to Murrayville. Gordon Road forms the southern edge of the neighborhood and carries most of it to Interstate 40. NCDOT project U-6202 is widening 2.5 miles of Gordon Road from I-40 to Market Street at a total cost of $81,100,000, and that work is underway now. Bus routes and morning drop-off runs through that corridor are going to be slower for years before they are faster.
What we tell our buyers is to run the exact address through the district’s school locator before writing an offer, and to do it again at the final walkthrough if the purchase spans a school year. The neighborhood price is set by the market. The school assignment is set by a line on a map, and in Murrayville there are three of them.
If the school report card is the deciding factor in your search, Murrayville is probably not where you land. The highest-scoring elementary in this set, Porters Neck at a B, only touches the eastern edge of the neighborhood, and buying into that slice means competing for a small number of houses. Families who put schools first usually end up looking at Porters Neck, Ogden or Hampstead in Pender County, and paying more per square foot to do it. The honest trade in Murrayville is a lower price and a shorter commute against grades that sit in the middle. Also worth saying plainly: a C school with strong growth can be a better place for a specific child than a B school that is coasting, and no report card can tell you which one your child will walk into.
Related questions people also ask
Is Murrayville Elementary inside the Murrayville neighborhood?
Yes. Murrayville Elementary sits at 225 Mabee Way, inside the Census boundary for the neighborhood rather than a drive away in another part of the county. That is unusual for an unincorporated area in New Hanover County and it is one reason families with young children look here. About 72 percent of the neighborhood is zoned to it, according to the New Hanover County Schools 2026 to 2027 zone maps we sampled on October 17, 2026.
Which high school does Murrayville feed?
Almost all of it feeds Emsley A. Laney High at 2700 North College Road, with a southern slice assigned to New Hanover High closer to downtown. Both carried a C on the 2025 North Carolina School Report Cards and neither met its growth target that year. Because the line runs through the neighborhood rather than around it, you should confirm the assignment for the specific address rather than assuming Laney.
Can I request a different school in New Hanover County?
New Hanover County Schools runs a transfer and school choice process, and seats depend on capacity at the receiving school, so a request is not a guarantee. We tell buyers never to treat a hoped-for transfer as part of the reason to buy a house, because the house is permanent and the seat is reviewed every year. If a specific school matters that much, buy inside its zone and verify the assignment with the district before closing.
Pull the school assignment for the exact address with the New Hanover County Schools locator before you write an offer, then look at the three or four streets on either side of the line to see whether a better assignment is available at the same price. That street-by-street read is the part buyers cannot do from a listing site, and it is worth twenty minutes with our team before you commit.
Sources: North Carolina School Report Cards, 2025 school performance grades and growth status, read October 17, 2026; New Hanover County Schools 2026 to 2027 attendance zone maps, sampled October 17, 2026; NCDOT project U-6202, Gordon Road widening, read October 17, 2026; Coldwell Banker Murraysville listings page, read October 17, 2026; Tidal Realty Partners Murrayville neighborhood guide and New Hanover County market update, three months ending September 2026.
