Riverdale High School is a public high school in the wealthy Dunthorpe neighborhood of Portland, Oregon, United States. The high school is unique in that it is a public school, but students from outside the district must go through an admissions process and pay tuition to attend, unless they get a district transfer from their original district. According to 24/7 Wall St.'s analysis of U.S. Census data from 2006 through 2010, the Riverdale School District is the third richest school district in the United States.HistoryFounded in 1996, the school was established under challenging circumstances. The community of Dunthorpe, which was historically anchored by Riverdale grade school, faced changes in 1991, when Oregon Senate Bill 917 decreed that all school districts should have both primary and secondary schools, and expected smaller school districts like Riverdale to merge. With only one grade school, Riverdale was expected to merge with the Lake Oswego School District to the south or the Portland Public Schools to the north. Riverdale chose to keep its independence (and became the only previously K-8 district in Oregon to do so). The community purchased an old grade school, the former Collins View School in southwest Portland, which was built in the mid-1930s and closed in 1976. The first year, 1996-97, Riverdale was housed at what is now the National University of Naturopathic Medicine in Portland, Oregon. Following that, while the permanent site was being renovated, high school students were bussed to a leased location at Marylhurst University in neighboring West Linn.
