Highland Park High School (University Park, Texas)

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Highland Park High School

Motto	"Enter to Learn, Go Forth to Serve."
Contact Information	Phone: 214 780 3700 Fax: 214 780 3801
Established	1922
Type	Public School
Principal	Patrick Cates
Location	4220 Emerson University Park, Texas (Dallas address) United States
District	Highland Park Independent School District
Enrollment	1,919 students
Grades	Ninth Grade to Twelfth Grade
Publication	The Bagpipe
Band	The Highlander Band
Drill Team	Highland Belles
Mascot	Fighting Scot
Website	http://hs.hpisd.org/

Highland Park High School is located in University Park, Texas.

Highland Park is a part of the Highland Park Independent School District. It serves all of the city of University Park, most of the city of Highland Park, and portions of Dallas.

1 History
2 Recent events
3 Information
4 Notable alumni
5 References
6 External links

[edit] History

The school was established in 1922. Before 1922, Highland Park students who were ready for high school rode the trolley down Cole Avenue to Dallas to attend Bryan Street High School. When the new high school opened in January, 1922, pupils in eighth and ninth grade attended school at Armstrong Elementary School in Highland Park in half-day sessions until the building was ready for occupancy. They returned to Armstrong for lunch the remainder of that year. Those who had cars filled them to capacity for the "trip to lunch", and the other students walked.

The tenth grade was added in the fall of 1922, and the eleventh grade a year later. In 1924, thirty-three students became the first graduating class of the Highland Park Independent School District. (At that time, only eleven years of school were required prior to college admittance, and it was not until 1937 that the twelfth grade was added.) [1] It was this first location on Highschool Street and Granada that became the middle school in 1937 when the current Highland Park High School building was erected on Emerson Avenue. The old building become the Highland Park Junior High School, which in later years was renamed Arch H. McCulloch Middle School. The school added the fifth grade and split into Highland Park Middle School for grades 7 and 8 and Arch H. McCulloch Intermediate School for 5th and 6th graders upon moving to a new facility after which the old building was demolished.

[edit] Recent events

In 1999, Dallas police issued 200 alcohol and curfew violations citations to Park Cities teens partying in a Deep Ellum warehouse. CNN picked up the story, and after it emerged that students had rented the facility and contracted a bus company to safely deliver drunken high school students to and from the party, the Alliance on Underage Drinking (ALOUD) started the "Parents Who Host, Lose the Most" campaign, which informs parents about health, safety and legal ramifications of serving alcohol to underage individuals.^[1]

In late 2004, Simon & Schuster published young adult author Francine Pascal's The Ruling Class, a teen drama set at Highland Park High School. The school's newspaper The Bagpipe published community reactions to the book, and online reviews are mixed.^[2]

In late 2005, The Dallas Morning News published a story about the Friday of Highland Park's homecoming spirit week, on which several seniors dressed as thugs, maids and other caricatures of racial minorities.^[3] Some pointed to this as support for the general perception of Highland Park High School and the Park Cities as a "bubble" (as the area is known in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex). The article ignited a storm of letter-writing and editorializing to and in the Morning News. Soon after the article was published, two swastikas were spray-painted on a sign in front of the school, but it is disputed whether this was done in response to the Thug Day controversy, by racist elements within the high school, or as a prank by students from one of the school's football opponents.

In 2005 and 2006, Highland Park students received a multitude of state and national awards, and established several new records in Texas.^[4] The UIL Science Team, under the leadership of AP Chemistry teacher Wenzen Chuang, won state for the second time in the history of the high school. The Bagpipe newspaper received the Gold Crown Award for excellence in journalism in 2005 and later that year was one of 15 high schools in the country to win an NSPA Pacemaker. The same year, the school's yearbook, The Highlander, was chosen as a finalist for the NSPA Pacemaker award and Highland Park Television was chosen as a finalist for the NSPA Broadcast Pacemaker; Highland Park Television won the award the following year. On December 10, 2005, the football team won its first state championship since 1957, beating Marshall High School 59-0, the largest margin-of-victory ever in a UIL 11-man state championship football game. This also produced the first-ever undefeated team at Highland Park.

[edit] Information

Highland Park was ranked as 12th in Newsweek's list of the top high schools in the United States,^[5] based on the Challenge Index by Jay Mathews. The Challenge Index ranks schools by the number of AP and IB tests taken by students at a school in 2002 divided by the number of graduating seniors. The school was also ranked the 16th most athletic high school in the nation by Sports Illustrated^{[citation needed]} and is listed by the same publication as having the best sports program in the state of Texas.^[6]

It is currently classified as a division 4A high school by the University Interscholastic League. The average class size is 32 students per teacher, with about 500 students in a grade.

Highland Park is often referred to as "The Bubble". According the The Dallas Morning News, as of 2005 the high school's ethnic makeup is about 94 percent white.^[3]