taken from the May 19, 1992 Stevens Point Journal
By
GENE KEMMETER
Wisconsin has always prided itself as a supporter of education, incorporating
the principle of a free education in the state constitution. Portage County
has followed that principle.
Education in the county has evolved from parental instruction, to one-room
schoolhouses to one of the largest high schools in the state, not to mention
the home for a University of Wisconsin campus and a vocational and technical
school.
The first school district within the existing Portage County borders
was established in Stevens Point in January 1847 at the request of Mathias
Mitchell, James and John Campbell and others.
The first school teacher was apparently Mandana Hale who opened a private
school north of the Public Square that April. Hale, whom later married
Nathaniel F. Bliss, is the namesake for Bliss Center, the administrative
center for the Stevens Point Area School District.
In 1850, the first public school building was constructed at the site
marked by the historical marker in the municipal parking lot in the 1000
block of Clark Street.
Its use as a school building was short because it was too small, with
a two-story building between Water and Elk Streets at the site of today's
Lincoln Center, which replaced it.
The early pioneers had a thirst for education. In 1857, the Northern
Institute, also known as “The Young Ladies Seminary” and the “Stevens
Point Female Seminary,” was founded by Mrs. Clarissa Northrop. Girls from
about age 12 and older were enrolled in three departments: preparatory,
junior and senior. Within two years, the school was opened to lower grades
and also took in boys.
During the Civil War, however, the school closed down and the original
building was divided into three residences in the neighborhood of Division
and Oak Streets.
Plover residents were the second to establish a school district in the
county in May 1847. However, education was probably conducted in private
residences because village records indicate the board agreed to lease property
for a school in 1853.
After most of the towns were organized in the 1850s, education was in
the hands of town boards and the elected town school superintendents who
hired the teaching staff.
School districts and rural schools were established throughout most
of the county, with the schools usually about two miles apart.
By 1882, Portage County had its first superintendent of schools, George
W. Hulce, who was responsible for examining the various schools.
In the early days, a teacher sometimes was no older than the pupils
being taught as seasonal workers, who often entered school during the winter
months.
The first high school built in the county was just northeast of the
corner of Clark and Church streets (the Charles M. White Library property)
in Stevens Point in 1876. The first graduating class was in 1881, with
nine students receiving diplomas. Today, Stevens Point Area Senior High
School is one of the largest high schools in the state with an enrollment
of about 1,700 students.
While public education was growing, the first parochial grade school
was established by St. Stephen Catholic Church in 1873. The first parochial
high school was St. Joseph's Academy for Girls in 1922. That school became
Maria High School which later merged with Pacelli High School for boys.
By World War I, the number of rural schools reached their peak in the
one-room school houses and then began to dwindle as multi-room buildings
were constructed.
In 1947, the state enacted legislation to permit school consolidation,
and the Tomorrow River School District in the Amherst area was the first
to consolidate Amherst schools with several rural schools in 1940.
That slowly meant the demise for the one-room schools as classrooms
by the 1970s. Some of those old schools remain, however, finding second
lives as residences or other facilities.
Consolidations also led to the formation of the Stevens Point, Rosholt,
Almond-Bancroft, Wisconsin Rapids and Tri-County school districts to serve
county residents.
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