page_title: Portland Public Schools (Oregon)
section_title: 19th century
hierarchical_section_title: Portland Public Schools (Oregon) / History / 19th century
caption_attribution_description: English: North Portland, Oregon (2019)
context_page_description: 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 PK–12 district with an enrollment of more than 49,000 students. It comprises more than 100 locations, including 79 schools and other sites that are maintained within the district.
context_section_description: 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. 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."
  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.
  On December 18, 1854, the school board organized two school districts, named School District Number 1 and School District Number 2, divided by Morrison Street.  On March 31, 1856, they were merged into a single School District Number 1.
  School District Number 1 opened a school in fall 1855, presumably replacing the school started by Outhouse and Clarke. This school was presided over by Sylvester Pennoyer and closed in six months, as the funds were exhausted. In 1858, a new schoolhouse was built, financed by canceling school for a year. The school was located at Sixth and Morrison and named the Central School. The Central School location was later occupied by the Portland Hotel and is now Pioneer Courthouse Square. A high school, Portland High School, was opened in 1869, and a night school program was created at the high school in 1889.
  In the 1860s, the school budget was very low, about $10 per student per year. William S. Ladd, known for being thrifty, raised objections to the school paying for supplies such as ink, requiring students to instead make their own by boiling oak bark and carrying it in animal horns.
  In 1867, shoemaker William Brown, one of approximately 200 black people then living in Portland, sued the school district for refusing to educate the 16 black children in the city. The Colored School opened in fall 1867, discontinuing in 1872 when a local referendum supported integration. By December 1873, 30 students (out of 1048) in the district were black.
  By the end of the 1870s, there were four elementary schools: Central School (1858–?), Harrison School (1866–?), Colored School (Portland, Oregon) (1867–1872), and North School (1868–?).
  Portland schools were questioned by Harvey W. Scott and The Oregonian in 1880, especially regarding the efficacy and practicality of public high schools. The yearly cost to educate a student in 1879 in Portland was $24.06.
  A compulsory education program was enacted in Oregon on February 25, 1889. By 1891, the district contained 95 teachers, seven elementary schools, one high school, and
caption: Roosevelt High School
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