# Waterford School District

Waterford School District is a school district headquartered in Waterford Township, Michigan.

## History

Waterford Township lays claim to the first public school in Oakland County. That school was established in 1821 on the shores of Silver Lake with seven students. That number grew to thirteen when its first permanent home, a log schoolhouse, was dedicated the next year. Ira Donelson, for whom Donelson Hills Elementary is named, was elected as the township's first Supervisor of Education in 1835, the year Waterford Township was organized. As the township grew, more schoolhouses were built, including Drayton Plains in 1865, Four Towns in 1866 and Waterford Center in 1869.
While one-room schoolhouses were the norm during the rural 19th century, multiroom school buildings became the norm as Waterford transitioned into a suburban community. The first was the Waterford School, built in 1910 and expanded in 1927 and later to be renamed Waterford Village Elementary (which was closed in 2014); Four Towns and Waterford Center moved to new and larger school buildings within the next few decades, while the new Drayton Plains School opened in 1920. The hope was to consolidate these schools in a single district with the possible addition of a high school—Waterford's high school students then attended either Clarkston High School or Pontiac High School—but the Great Depression and then World War II postponed consolidation until 1944, when the present Waterford School District was formed. By then, the Williams Lake School, the fifth of the original schools in the district, was completed in 1943.
Attention was then turned to building a high school for Waterford Township, which doubled in population during the 1940s. For the first several years after Waterford Township High School was established in 1947, kindergarten through sixth grade attended Four Towns, Waterford Village, Williams Lake or Waterford Center, while the high school was based at Drayton Plains School until a permanent home, on the corner of M-59 and Crescent Lake Road, was completed in 1950. Also in the early 1950s, Issac E. Crary Junior High became the first junior high school in the district.
At its peak in the 1970s, Waterford School District contained twenty-seven elementary schools, three junior schools (which became middle schools in 1990); Crary (which transitioned to an administrative building in 2010), Pierce and Mason, and three high schools; Waterford Township (which closed in 1983), Kettering and Mott. As of 2016, there were nine elementary schools, two middle schools and three high schools.

## Schools

Many schools in the district were named after people. Although the district no longer refers to the schools' namesakes on their website, several sources have used the full namesake when referring to the school.
Waterford Schools :
| School | Address | Notes |
| High Schools |||
| Waterford Durant High School | 501 N. Cass Lake Rd., Waterford | (credit recovery) |
| Waterford Kettering High School | 2800 Kettering Dr., Waterford | Opened 1961 |
| Waterford Mott High School | 1151 Scott Lake Rd., Waterford | Opened 1967 |
| Middle Schools |||
| Pierce Middle School | 5145 Hatchery Rd., Waterford | Opened 1957. Named after John D. Pierce |
| Mason Middle School | 3835 W. Walton Blvd., Waterford | Opened 1965. Named after Stevens T. Mason. |
| Elementary Schools |||
| Beaumont Elementary School | 6532 Elizabeth Lake Rd., Waterford | Named after William Beaumont. |
| Cooley Elementary School | 2000 Highfield St., Waterford | Named after Thomas M. Cooley. |
| Grayson Elementary School | 3800 W. Walton Blvd., Waterford | Named after David Grayson. |
| Donelson Hills Elementary School | 2690 Wewoka St., Waterford | |
| Houghton Elementary School | 8080 Elizabeth Lake Rd., White Lake | Named after Douglass Houghton. |
| Haviland Elementary School | 5305 Cass Elizabeth Rd. | Named after Laura S. Haviland. |
| Knudsen Elementary School | 5449 Crescent Rd., Waterford | Named after Patricia E. Knudsen |
| Riverside Elementary School | 5280 Farm Rd., Waterford | |
| Schoolcraft Elementary School | 6400 Maceday Dr., Waterford | Named after Henry R. Schoolcraft. |
| Early Childhood Centers and special education schools |||
| Kingsley Montgomery School | 4265 Halkirk St., Waterford | special needs school |
| Lifetracks | 501 N. Cass Lake Rd., Waterford | post-secondary special education school |
| Stepanski Early Childhood Center | 6010 Hatchery Rd., Waterford | Preschool, on the site of former Williams Lake Elementary. |
Waterford School District also operates the Children's Village School for students at Oakland County Children's Village, the county's juvenile detention, residential treatment, and shelter program.