Portland Public Schools, Oregon
| Portland Public Schools | |
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Portland, Oregon United States |
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| District information | |
| Type | Public |
| Grades | Pre K-12 |
| Established | 1851 |
| Schools | 79 |
| Budget | $592 million |
| Students and staff | |
| Students | 49,189 |
| Teachers | 3,506 |
| Staff | 4,123 |
| Other information | |
| Website | pps |
Portland Public Schools (PPS) is a public school district located in Portland, Oregon, United States. It is the largest school district in the state of Oregon. It is a Pre K-12 district with an enrollment of more than 49,000 students. It comprises more than 100 locations, including 79 schools and other sites are maintained within the district.
In the 1850s, when the first public schools were formed in Portland, free education was still a new concept. On December 6, 1851, the following advertisement appeared in The Oregonian:
In pursuance of a vote of the Portland school district at their annual meeting, the directors have established a free school. The first term will commence on Monday, the 15th inst., at the schoolhouse in this city, near the City Hotel. (John W. [sic] Outhouse, teacher.) The directors would recommend the following books to be used in the school, viz.: Sandler’s Series of Readers and Spellers, Goodrich’s Geography, Thompson’s Arithmetics and Bullion’s Grammar.
John Outhouse, the schoolteacher, was paid 100 dollars a month. The school was held in a school house at the corner of First and Oak Streets, in what is now Northwest Portland, and had just 20 students at first.
The early public schools were met with some criticism. As an editorial in The Oregonian on July 3, 1852 read, the Common School Council was "self-called, self-elected, that voted a thousand dollars in addition to be paid by our citizens for pedagoguing some dozen or two of children."
Abigail Clarke was hired at the beginning of the third term in 1852, due to increased attendance and a $1600 tax to pay for the schools. She was paid 75 dollars a month, and taught at a new school building, on First and Taylor Streets. By the third term, 126 students were enrolled in all, and an average of 90 showed up each day. Clarke was known to "thrash" boys who made a sport of rapping on the windows of the school, which faced out to the street. She continued to teach until the summer of 1853, when she moved to Oregon City.
In December 1854, Thomas Frazer wrote a notice in The Oregonian to try to create a school board for Portland. Many responded, and the first school board consisted of Thomas Frazer himself, William S. Ladd, and Shubrick Norris as directors. The first superintendent of Multnomah County was L. Limerick, who was appointed in January 1855.
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