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.