19th century In the 1850s, when the first public schools were formed in Portland, free education was 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. 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 served as the schoolteacher, and 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." In 1858, a new schoolhouse was built, financed by canceling school for a year. 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 one night school. The schools were described as crowded by
The Oregonian at that time. Other school districts in East Portland and Albina were combined in 1891 (with 83% of residents voting in favor of consolidation). This added nine elementary schools, 74 teachers, and 2698 students to the system. Enrollment in PPS continued to decline until 2010 and now slow growth is projected. Faced with some very small schools (200–350 students) the district has undertaken what is intended to be a continual process of Enrollment Balancing to deal with anemic programs in some schools and overcrowded buildings in others.
21st century with sign saying it is closed for lead testing Since 2000, there have been concerns about
lead and
radon in Portland Public School buildings. In 2016, an overly large amount of lead was found in two schools. All PPS schools were ordered to use bottled water for the rest of the year instead of drinking from water fountains, and to use bottled water for food preparation and dish washing as well. Controversy surrounding poorly and infrequently tested water for lead led to Superintendent
Carole Smith stepping down in July 2016, a year before her ten-year term ended. In August 2017,
Guadalupe Guerrero became the new Superintendent. Voters approved a $482 million bond measure in November 2012 to upgrade several schools, including
Grant High School,
Franklin High School, and
Roosevelt High School. In May 2017, an additional $790 million bond measure was passed to reopen Kellogg Middle School and modernize three other schools:
Madison High School,
Benson Polytechnic High School, and
Lincoln High School. In 2020, the district ended the regular use of
school resource officers and Guerrero announced plans to re-examine how the school district is partnered with the
Portland Police Bureau. On November 1, 2023, the
Portland Association of Teachers went on strike, the first teacher strike in the district's history. The strike lasted for several weeks, ending in December. Due to the amount of days lost, Winter Break was only a week long that year, as opposed to the regular two. ==Demographics==