Parents Push for Boone Annexation
A child at Northway Christian Day School in Dallas was choking, and the school called for help.
But Dallas emergency dispatch could not be convinced that the church next to Boone Elementary was in the city of Dallas. The dispatcher transferred the call to University Park dispatch. University Park’s dispatcher apologized, then sent the church’s call back to Dallas.
The child was alright — a teacher at the school was able to perform the Heimlich maneuver. But the confusion over whether Boone Elementary and Northway Christian Church are in Dallas or University Park remains an ongoing problem, day school board chairman Bevan Rhine Liverman said during a May 16 meeting about the potential annexation of Boone and Northway Christian by the city of University Park.
“These are precious minutes that are being lost,” she said while recounting the experience. “And this is not the fault of Dallas Fire and Rescue. This is confusion over where the borders are.”
About 170 parents, school district and city officials, and members of HPISD’s board of trustees gathered at Boone Elementary during the Thursday afternoon meeting with Dallas City Council Member Gay Donnell Willis. The space became so crowded that the school opened the partition to its cafetorium and pulled up additional chairs.
Boone Parent Teacher Organization president Jamie O’Boyle said that she hoped to show Willis the strength of community support for annexation, which would include Boone Elementary, Northway Christian Church, the streets surrounding the church and school, and Airline Road south to the current Dallas city limit. Willis represents City Council District 13, which includes the church, school, and surrounding homes which are in the city of Dallas but zoned to HPISD.
Parents who spoke in favor of annexation said the move would be mutually beneficial to Dallas, Northway Christian, and Boone Elementary by improving student safety and Boone’s ability to fundraise, and by relieving the city of Dallas of the responsibility for addressing street and other infrastructure needs.
Willis told meeting attendees that her colleagues could have concerns about losing future tax revenue if the property ever ceased being a school and church. These objections might be addressed through revenue sharing arrangements, which are currently being explored, she said.
Willis said the prospect of University Park taking over street, stormwater, and other transportation issues would be meaningful to her colleagues. “This is a little different from some of the things that we normally encounter, and I just want to be sure that I’m able to say, ‘this is a rock-solid plan of why we should do this,’” she said.
University Park submitted a boundary adjustment application that included the church and Boone Elementary to the city of Dallas in June 2023. Willis said this August would be the earliest annexation could go before a city council committee.
