Hillsboro School District - History

History

Hillsboro’s first school district was formed in 1851 as School District 7. The Reverend Horace Lyman established the district and was the first commissioner, with that title later becoming school superintendent. The first school in the district was a single-room log cabin built in 1853 after a school levy was passed to raise $600 for construction. In 1875, a new frame constructed school was built, with the smaller log cabin kept for additional space.

Then in 1890 a new eight-room schoolhouse was finished at the present site of David Hill Elementary. In September 1908, tenth grade was added to the Hillsboro school district, with the classes held on the top floor of the school. Eleventh and twelfth grades were soon added, and in June 1911 the first students to complete four years of high school graduated. This class totaled five students, four girls and one boy. A stand alone high school was completed by 1913, and a gymnasium was built beginning in 1915. The district overall employed a total of 19 teachers for the 1913 to 1914 school year.

All five of the teachers in the High School district resigned in 1914 in a dispute with management. The school board had allowed the students to vote on which teachers to retain, which the teachers resented even though all were retained in the vote. The mass walkout led to classes being canceled for a time. The district paid high school teachers $133 per month, and the other teachers $125 per month, and the principals earned $1500 per year for the 1920 to 1921 school year. In 1929, a new high school building was finished with additional buildings and the wings added later. The neighboring Cornelius school district was dissolved in 1960, and part of their enrollment area was shifted to the Hillsboro districts, while the remainder went to the Forest Grove School District.

Brookwood Elementary was opened in 1953, followed by Poynter Junior High, Brown Junior High, and Mooberry Elementary all in 1963. In May 1961, voters in all the districts feeding the high school voted on a proposal to merge into a single district. Voters decided not to merge, but the next year in February voters did approve merging the junior high grades into the high school district. The high school district then purchased Poynter from the elementary district for $772,566, and passed a bond measure in March 1962 to pay for that purchase, expand the school, and pay for the new junior high school that became Brown.

The district opened Hare Field in 1965, a multi-sport facility with a track, baseball stadium, and football field. In 1970, a new senior high school opened on 48 acres (190,000 m2) on the south side of Hillsboro, with enrollment of the high school district reaching 3,621 students that year. The Union High School District's teachers held a three-day strike in March 1970 over their contracts, the first teacher's strike in Oregon history.

By 1987, enrollment in all the districts feeding into the high school district along with the high school district reached approximately 12,325 students. In 1987, the Union High School District began plans to unify the high school district with the six elementary districts that feed into the district's junior and senior high schools. In 1991, the Oregon Legislature passed a law requiring school districts to unify by 1996, which forced some reluctant elementary districts to unify into the Hillsboro School District. On July 1, 1996, Hillsboro Elementary, North Plains, Farmington View, Groner, Reedville, West Union, and Hillsboro Union High School districts unified into a single district, the fifth largest in Oregon at that time.

In 2003, the district made national news when 17 days of classes were cut from the school year which allowed students to be out in May due to budget cuts to education in Oregon. That year enrollment reached 18,951 for the unified district. In 2006, the district implemented a statistical tracking program that keeps track of all student information such as demographics, attendance, and academic achievement.

The district faced opposition in 2009 over the demolition of J. B. Thomas Middle School, a building preservationists wanted to save for use as a community building. The district planned to tear down the old building after a 2006 bond measure approved construction of several new schools including a new middle school, and expansion at the other existing middle schools. A new elementary school was built with funds from this levy on the eastern part of Thomas' grounds, with the buildings of the old school to be torn down to make way for athletic fields. In July 2009, a court allowed the demolition to go forward. By November 2009 the district had become the first in Oregon to use an Internet-based crisis management program to allow for easier access to information on schools by the district.