Dallas City Wire

A nonprofit community group has been formed to ensure the well-being and welfare of children attending the Highland Park Independent School District.

Parents Unite! was started a few months ago and already has hundreds of members from across the Park Cities, Amanda Turner Nobles, one of the members, told Dallas City Wire.

“We highly value every child in our school district, and want to ensure they have the best chance at a promising future as they grow in their personal live,” Nobles said.

Parents Unite! was formed because “many parents became more aware of what was actually happening at HPISD as our children were forced to discontinue in-person classes last spring," Nobles said. "We found out that the school district made choices in the past that led to a continual decline of performance and educational results. As parents and community leaders, we know that HPISD needs more community input on what we expect from our schools. “We expect nothing less than exceptional schools in the Park Cities.”

Nobles and others are volunteering.

“Many parents and community leaders are volunteering to lead this organization in pursuit of HPISD excellence,” she said. “As a parent with kids in our local public schools, I am personally committed to ensuring that result for my neighbors as well as my own children.”

HPISD faces numerous challenges, including decisions made during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The Centers for Disease Control, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and many other scientists have called for schools to remain open during the COVID-19 crisis, but our schools are ignoring the science and instead bowing to emotional arguments to close the schools,” Nobles said. “HPISD has also recently received hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to enlarge the capacity of the school system, despite the fact that the population of school-age children has decreased every year. Lastly, according to the Texas School Guide by Children at Risk not one HPISD elementary school is ranked in the Top 100, the middle school is not Top 50, and the high school is No. 74. These are just a few of the issues that many parents, community leaders and even kids themselves are concerned with.”

Nobles said the group has no political goals except to support school board candidates who share the goal of ensuring the district regains excellence in education.

“Parents Unite! has only one goal – to ensure we regain excellence in education for our community," she said. "We have no political goals other than that, but certainly hope our members will support any candidates for the school board who share that commitment.” 

The group has a webpage, PCParentsUnite.org. Additional social media pages are accessible from the site.