Portsmouth Schools history

Superintendent Hume evidently was a progressive educator, as there is a record of his attending the National Teachers’ Meeting in Philadelphia in 1850 in an effort to glean new ideas and to become informed concerning the best practices of the time.

About ten years later on September 27, 1876, at the request of Father Thomas J. Brady, the Sisters staffed the first Catholic school in the city.

In late 1881 Miss Alice Ledger was appointed as the first Headmistress, and the school began to take shape.

It was not quite ready by the beginning of the Spring Term, but opened at half-term, on 21st February 1882.

The school continued to grow and in 1883 the current site on Kent Road was purchased.

The Brothers staffed the Academy for thirty nine years until 1931 when the coeducational system of education was adopted by the schools and the Daughters of Charity assumed the staffing of both the elementary and high schools.

Little Flower School opened in 1954 in the Oregon Acres section of the city.

In 1955 another Catholic elementary school opened in the Brentwood area of Chesapeake.

The school again changed its name to Portsmouth Catholic High School in 1964.

In 1986, under the guidance of the school board chairman, R. Franklin Hawkins, and the superintendent, Doctor Rondle E. Edwards, a group of concerned community leaders and business people joined together to form the Portsmouth Schools Foundation.