Highland Park Elementary School Tour

Highland Park Elementary is located at 4900 Fairview Drive, 78731, in Austin, Texas, & was built in 1952 and looks nothing like the spacious and modern school buildings of today. The building has the charm and feel of a school from a different era, and visitors to the school are more aware of the shine on the old tile floors, the bountiful displays of student work, and the comfortable and friendly, but businesslike, atmosphere. We are proud of Highland Park, both for its cooperative relationship between faculty and community, and its dynamic administration and staff.

Highland Park is situated in west Austin, right at the foot of the Balcones Fault, making for some rather interesting terrain.. With a large playground area and city park facilities at its doorstep, Highland Park is in a prime location for giving students a wonderful opportunity to learn, explore, and play. Take a look at a few sites in and around Highland Park, and enjoy your tour.

Our School

From the road, Highland Park appears to go in several directions. The library and computer lab areas can be seen in the foreground on the left. Both fifth and second grade classes fill this wing facing the street, with each classroom having a wall of windows allowing for plenty of natural light. In addition, each classroom can be accessed through both interior and exterior doors.

To see an expansive virtual reality image of the quarry /city park area behind our school, click here.

Recently, a new landscaped front entry area was prepared & includes brick pavement, a raised, circular, tile-walled (with student-created tiles) above-ground flower bed with 3 flagpoles , new trees, landscaping, a new school marquee area, and gravel trails and bench seating areas under existing trees.

The first grade and kindergarten wings also face the front of the street on the right, separated by a nice courtyard area.

The third & fourth grade wings are around the back side of the school, along with four portable buildings housing kindergarten, day-care, music, and after-school program rooms.

As part of AISD's 1990's bond package, Highland Park received a new building wing behind the existing school building, completed in the fall of 1999, which houses 8 new classrooms, a new teacher workroom, a conference room, and a PTA office/workroom. Landscaping was also done outside the building, with some new trees planted on the north side of the wing. The wing was also tied into the existing campus computer network after completion, with 6 ethernet drops & a phone line in each room, so that teachers & students would have network services in their new rooms, including email & internet access, & networked laser printers.

In a dedication ceremony in the fall semester of 1999, the building was dedicated to a Highland Park teacher who passed away during the summer of 1999, and who taught third grade here for many years - R.J. Mettelka. Mr. Mettelka was loved by all, and the room that was to have been his new classroom is in the new building wing, along with the rest of the third grade classrooms, a fourth grade classroom, and a special education classroom. Mr. Mettelka will long be remembered for his service to the school and his care & concern for the children and staff at Highland Park. This new wing has helped ease overcrowding at Highland Park, and has enabled us to eliminate three classroom portable buildings that had been stationed in front of the school. In addition, a new portable was added adjacent to the new wing for our after-school program. This building has also relieved a space constraint situation, as the after-school program had been based in the cafeteria in prior years.

Technology is one of our priorities at Highland Park Elementary, so the computer lab is a busy place. Highland Park installed new computer lab computers, and rewired the lab, in the summer of 1999. The lab has 26 total workstations at this time, including a teacher workstation that is connected to a large-screen ceiling-mounted projector, which also doubles as a student workstation as necessary. All student workstations are eMacs, and the teacher workstation is an iMac G5 flat-panel with audio/video connectivity. The lab has 2 networked printers, including one laser b & w printer, and one laser color printer, and is also outfitted with a desktop scanner. The lab is where students make the most use of high-speed ethernet/fiber optic-based internet access & work on most of their computer-based projects. Teachers bring their classes in once weekly for 45-60 minute blocks, or schedule their days in rotation so that they may have back-to-back blocks of time in the lab from 2 to 5 days in a row. The lab was updated again in the summer of 2003 with new computers provided by the district, & the previous lab computers were relocated in classrooms around the school.

Library Students at Highland Park now benefit from a state-of-the-art online library card cataloguing system. This internet-based system, called iBistro, catalogues school library books electronically and facilitates student searches for library titles and materials. It is available across the district, and eventually all schools in the district will be accessing their school library catalogues this way. Seven computers are set up in the library for this purpose. Our students have been trained to utilize this new catalogue system. These computers are also available for internet access and research, and for utilizing reference CD-ROMs such as encyclopedias and atlases. Highland Park's library is a great place, full of great classic & modern-day fiction & non-fiction, reference materials, & computer-based resources.

Highland Park is fortunate to be located adjacent to an Austin city park - Perry Park & Playground. The lower part of the park is actually remnants of an old quarry located in this area, and therefore resembles a large "bowl" cut into the ground. Two playscape areas are located next to the school above the bowl, and our coach & students make regular use of the sports field down in the bowl and the track around the park, which also includes tennis courts near the school and several short wooded hiking trails.