Portland Public Schools 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.History19th centuryIn 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. 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. An editorial in The Oregonian on July 3, 1852 stated that 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."
