Highland Park High School

Park Cities Kids Are Already Rich. Why Do We Want Them To Be Smart?

"There's nothing sure. The rich get rich and the poor get poor. In the meantime, in between time, ain't we got fun?" "Ain't We Got Fun," Van and Schenck, 1921 Hate that lyric. Always did. Don't think it's true. The most recent big upward mobility study found that, while mobility in the U.S. isn ... More >>

Highland Park ISD Bans Books Because Sex

Highland Park High School announced it would be suspending seven books from the high school reading list, just in time for Banned Books Week. So what's wrong with the books? Each of the seven, award-winning texts feature themes about sexuality or include passages that some parents find too racy. S ... More >>

Highland Park Lacrosse Player Beat Up Chef After Being Kicked Out of Party, Suit Claims

Dallas caterer and restaurateur Andrew Ormsby, who operates an eponymous catering company out of the Cityplace tower and is one of the people behind the Ku De Ta day resort, filed a lawsuit in Dallas County accusing Domenic Massimilian, a Cornell University lacrosse player, of assault. Massimilian ... More >>

Park Cities Parents Want Their Kids to Read the Classics, Not These Newfangled Porn Novels

Jodi Picoult's Nineteen Minutes and Steven Chbosky's The Perks of Being a Wallflower have two things in common. They both delve into complicated topics of teenage bullying and social struggles, and Highland Park High School parents don't want their kids reading either of them. Both contain passages ... More >>

Teens Keep Vandalizing a University Park Sex Offender's House, and He's Getting Sick of It

When Robert Coleman's house got egged, he called the University Park police. It was a Saturday night in September 2012. Officers came to the crime scene but found no leads, other than the splattered egg yolk. Coleman realized that his patio umbrella was also missing, according to the police report. ... More >>

Dallas ISD Has the Best High School in the Country. Again.

For all the roiling arguments surrounding Dallas ISD -- over governance and closing achievement gaps and teacher pay and whatever else two adults might possibly disagree on -- there's one topic over which there is little debate: Dallas ISD does magnet schools right. Just in case you needed a remind ... More >>

Two Robbers Tied Up a 76-Year-Old at His Lakewood Home, Stole His TV and Class Ring

The man who knocked on David Goldman's door at 9:30 last night didn't look like trouble. He was fairly young, in his mid-20s, "dressed neat, clean-shaven and (with) a good haircut," the 76-year-old later told police, and he asked the price on the 1996 Mercedes for sale in the driveway. Two grand? Th ... More >>

In Brief Answer, Family of Ryan Romo's Accuser Denies Defamation, Other Charges

Back in March, after a grand jury declined to indict him on charges of rape, former Highland Park High School student Ryan Romo sued his accuser and her family. The complaint alleged five separate counts of misconduct, leveled at different family members. Among them: malicious prosecution, negligenc ... More >>

Amanda Thatcher, Highland Park Grad and the Late Prime Minister's Granddaughter, is the Darling of the British Press

In the wake of Margaret Thatcher's death last week, the Morning News took the opportunity to plumb its archives to remind us of the British prime minister's surprisingly strong ties to Dallas. She was something of a regular here, making frequent trips to Highland Park to visit her son Mark and her t ... More >>

Depsite Bomb Threats, Park Cities Schools Reject Metal Detectors as Too "Urban"

Despite Bomb Threats, Metal Detectors are too Urban for Highland Park High

I have a column coming out in next week's paper about the bomb and gun threats at Highland Park High School. It was inspired by (ripped off from) a story in The Huffington Post last week by Park Cities freelance writer Pamela Kripke, who is also the mother of a HPHS student. It's a pretty amazing p ... More >>

Former Highland Park Student Ryan Romo is Suing the Girl Who Accused Him of Rape [Updated]

Back in January, a grand jury declined to indict 19-year-old Ryan Romo, the former Highland Park High School student accused of rape by a younger classmate. The girl alleged that Romo raped her in the back seat of his car following an October Ghostland Observatory concert at the Palladium Ballroom. ... More >>

Highland Park High School is on Lockdown after Box of Bullet Shells Discovered in Bathroom

Yesterday morning, Highland Park High School was evacuated after school officials found a threatening note in a boys' bathroom. It was the same boys' bathroom where three similar notes had been found the month before. In all four cases, a search of the school revealed nothing. The danger became a b ... More >>

Grand Jury Declines to Indict Highland Park Student After Rape Accusation

A Dallas County grand jury has declined to indict a prominent Highland Park High School student who was accused of raping a 16-year-old girl after a concert last fall. Ryan Romo, 18, was arrested in October, accused of raping a younger female acquaintance in the back of his Chevy Tahoe after a Ghos ... More >>

A Highland Park Student is Charged with Rape, and Culture Map Kicks Off the Victim Blaming

On Tuesday, Ryan Adam Romo, an 18-year-old Highland Park High School senior and star baseball player, was charged with sexual assault of a child, a second-degree felony. Romo is accused of raping a HPHS classmate after a Ghostland Observatory concert at the Palladium Ballroom Saturday night. Given ... More >>

U.S. News and World Report: DISD Has Two of Top Three High Schools in the Country

Two Dallas high schools -- the School for the Talented and Gifted and the School of Science and Engineering Magnet -- didn't just survive the multi-stage culling process U.S. News and World Report used to arrive at a list of the country's 97 cream-of-the-crop schools. They snagged two of the top thr ... More >>

No Matter How You Add It Up, Dallas ISD's Magnets Still Top Best High Schools Lists

Again, the Yvonne A. Ewell Townview Magnet Center houses some of the best individual high schools in the U.S.​Exactly one month ago we got a look at longtime Washington Post education columnist Jay Mathews' list of the best public high schools in the country -- the same list that used to run in Ne ... More >>

Whitt's End: 2.4.11

​Whether you've reached the end of your rope or merely the end of your week, welcome to Whitt's End: *So, what's harder to predict: Weather or sports? Coulda sworn Ron Jackson, Pete Delkus and the boys said there was a 30-percent chance of 1-2 inches of snow on Friday. But I drove home l ... More >>

Dallas ISD's Board of Trustees Set to Receive Glowing Update on Teach for America in Dallas

Teach for America founder (and HPHS's own) Wendy Kopp​Four months back, Dallas Independent School District trustee Carla Ranger directed our attention to a a study by UT-Austin Assistant Professor of Educational Policy and Planning Julian Vasquez Heilig that questioned whether Highland Park High S ... More >>

Prediction: Dallas Cowboys Will End The NFL Season In Their Own Backyard (With A Little Luck And A Lot Of Health).

DISD Trustee Carla Ranger Directs Our Attention to a New Study Critical of Teach for America

Teach for America founder Wendy Kopp​In May 2009, Highland Park High School grad Wendy Kopp's Teach for America -- which gives recent college grads a five-week crash course in teaching before dropping them in low-income urban and rural schools -- sent close to 100 rookies to Dallas. DISD Superinte ... More >>

Go, Longhorns! (W.T. White Longhorns, That Is.)

Dallas had but four high schools listed among Newsweek's list of the top public high schools in the U.S. and A. in 2003 -- and back then, the highest-rated among the locals was Highland Park High School, which sat at No. 15 on the list, followed by W.T. White (at 290), Lake Highlands (482) and Hillc ... More >>

Angie Harmon Gets Nude and ... Nope, That Just About Covers It

If anyone's all fired up to see a mostly nude photo of Highland Park High School grad -- and Bush backer -- Angie Harmon, it's right here. It's part of a naked-celeb spread in the latest issue of Allure, which is some kind of a magazine, I think? "You wonder if they can see your Caesarean scar," she ... More >>

Sharon Keller is Texas' Judge Dread

When Sharon Keller turned off the clock on a Death Row inmate's last-gasp appeal, she became the most vilified judge in Texas

Dallas' Top-Ranked High Schools Not as High on U.S. News' New List

Inside the hallways of the School for the Talented and Gifted at Yvonne A. Ewell Townview Center, which is either the best or 14th-best high school in the nation, depending Thomas Jefferson High School's the highest-ranked high school in the land, says the issue of U.S News and World Report hitting ... More >>

He, Robot

Wired NextFest is kicking off today in Los Angeles, and it's where Richardson-based robot maker David Hanson, a Highland Park High School grad, will debut his offspring: Zeno. It's supposed to be the first robot that can actually expand its consciousness over time, which means that one day, yes, he ... More >>

Forever Young

Rub it in, dude, rub it in. In today's Chicago Tribune, columnist Phil Rogers -- a former Dallas Times Herald man, I might add -- offers up his mid-season baseball honors, and as far as he and the stats are concerned, there's no better pitcher in the National League than a former American Leaguer by ... More >>

Thank God, Now We Can Watch the Tonys!

HPHS's Stark Sands, up for a Tony this weekend Our Elaine Liner will report back shortly from the press conference announcing the debut of Kevin Moriarty as the Dallas Theater Center's new artistic director. Till then, feel free to read today's New York Sun profile of Stark Sands, the Highland Park ... More >>

Park City Thrifty

HPHS throws a garage sale for charity

No Homecoming for Hinckley. Aw, Dang.

If -- or, from the sound of it, when -- would-be Ronald Reagan assassin John W. Hinckley Jr. gets out of the mental hospital he calls home, don't expect the Highland Park High School product to come back to Dallas. No way, says his brother Scott, who still lives here. Even if U.S. District Judge Pau ... More >>

That's One Halo a Book

Wow, so this is cool. I just got my copy of Halo Effect: An Unauthorized Look at the Most Successful Video Game of All Time, an anthology published by Dallas-based BenBella Books. Editor Glenn Yeffeth has pulled together 13 essays on the video game Halo. Yeffeth calls it the "first-person shooter th ... More >>

Prince Peruna

Knocked off his high horse, Matt Doherty tries to whip SMU back into the race

The Former Mayor Pro Tem Would Be Delighted to Sell You a New (Or Very Old) House

Mary Poss has always been very close to Ebby Halliday. Now, Poss is working for the legendary realtor, selling historic homes. Every so often, when we have nothing to do except daydream about living in luxurious historic digs, we browse Preservation Dallas' compendium of "Historic Properties for Sal ... More >>

Feel My Rage

Doug Wright channeled his anger from growing up gay in the Park Cities into bizarre and brilliant plays

Does Every Former NFL Player Wind Up in Real Estate?

David Richards went from HP to SMU to the NFL...to real estate. Well, of course. On Halloween, as you no doubt recall, the largest commercial real estate company in the world, CB Richard Ellis Group, Inc., announced it was acquiring Trammell Crow Company for $2.2 billion. The deal isn't expected to ... More >>

Not MADI Anymore

The ugly lawsuit between the owner and creator of the MADI Museum in Uptown has been settled. I know, you can breathe now. Seemed like every day, or every hour, in May we were running items about the federal lawsuit involving artist Volf Roitman and the MADI Museum. Maybe you remember it: Roitman's ... More >>

Of Lost Legends and Found Heroes

MADI...But Hurt, Really

Volf Roitman, the artist whose work is at the center of the federal lawsuit involving the MADI Museum and the Kilgore & Kilgore law firm about which we've been writing, sent an e-mail today detailing the birth, and possible death, of his creation in Uptown. In his missive, the Argentine-born, Florid ... More >>

Lights, Camera, Play!

They're not exactly Pixar, but a crew of Highland Park teens find fame--not fortune--making machinima movies on the Xbox

Bubble-icious

Plus: A Better Jukebox

Rich Kids Behaving Badly

Nerdy, bitter and shod in fake Uggs, Andrea Grimes investigates the legend of the Park Cities Party

Mat Finish

The Wrestling Season takes a strong hold on tough teen issues; Den of Thieves steals time

Letters

Unnatural Selection, Bubbleheads for Bush

School's Out

When Fox-TV canceled American High, the network hit a new low

Cyber bore

The DotComGuy gets loads of publicity just like this for being a zero

Bench press

A pack of well-heeled lawyers calls for the head of mercurial Dallas Judge John Marshall

Buzz

Ghost chasing

Doak Walker's children remember a father, not a legend

Losing by Decision

The good ol' boys are winning their fight to keep Courtney Barnett and other girls out of high school wrestling

Buzz