From reimagining fundraising events to safely hosting student activities and designing creative ways for parents and volunteers to stay engaged with our schools, the Highland Park Independent School District community demonstrated an unwavering dedication to supporting the needs of students, teachers and staff. Presentations made during the May Board of Trustee meeting represented a small portion of the level of support provided by parents and volunteers this past year.
The Dads Club hosted the Parks Cities Dads Club Golf Classic Teachers Cup in April and in May presented a check in the amount of $140,000 to the Board of Trustees. Funds raised through the golf tournament exclusively benefit teachers at every HPISD campus to support various professional development programs. At the May Trustee meeting, the Board also approved gifts from Highland Park Sports Club, Park Cities-Talented & Gifted, and the PTAs at Armstrong, Hyer and University Park elementary schools. The $150,000 gift from HP Sports Club will benefit district athletic programs. The gifts from three PTAs totaled more than $1 million to support campus improvement and student enrichment initiatives, professional development and the purchase of technology resources. Watch for a special edition back to school story in August that will spotlight the impact all our PTAs and PTO groups provided throughout the 2020-21 school year.
The PC-TAG gift of $10,000 will help support STEAM initiatives at McCulloch Intermediate and Highland Park Middle School this fall. The two schools will utilize the funds to introduce a comprehensive, vertically-aligned robotics program for students in grades 5-8 to experience classroom and extracurricular opportunities in engineering and coding. The implementation of this STEAM grant also provides standards-aligned instruction and resources for a fifth-grade science unit in electrical circuits. PC-TAG President Aparna Bohil praised the grant proposal partnership. “It is a great collaboration between us and Dr. Moran, Dr. Miller, Jean Streepy and Ericca Vandagriff to launch this exciting program for MIS and HPMS,” she said.