Outdoor School is an Oregon rite of passage. Every year, thousands of students get out of the classroom for up to a week of hands-on environmental science education. The earliest programs date to 1957, when 23 Southern Oregon fifth and sixth graders spent five days at a site east of Medford. A second pilot popped up near Sisters the next year. Conversations got underway in Portland, and in spring 1966, with funding from the US Office of Education, the first local sixth graders showed up at a camp near Molalla. Sixty years later, the program, whose Portland-area iteration is run by the Multnomah Education Service District, continues to shuttle kids into the forest for scat-scouting hikes, ear-splitting songs, family-style meals, and a whole lot of social and emotional growth.   

500 Portland-area sixth graders who participated in spring 1966.

5,948 Portland-area sixth graders who participated in the 2025–26 school year.

380,951 Total number of Portland-area sixth graders who’ve participated since 1966.

10th Grade at which students can return to the program as volunteers
to lead cabins and teach field study.

1,575 High schoolers who volunteered in the 2025–26 school year, adopting such names as “Fern,” “Stump” and “Pine Marten.”

3.5 Diameter, in inches, of an average "wood cookie" name tag.

201 Sleeping bags supplied through MESD’s gear library in the 2025–26 school year.

67 Percentage of Oregon voters who said yes to Measure 99 in 2016, authorizing 4 percent of lottery revenue to be used for Outdoor School programs across the state.

20 Percent cut to statewide funding announced in June 2025.

∞ Verses in the song “Little Red Wagon,” unless someone intervenes to end it.

24–48K Estimated number of official beads handed out per school year, awarded to students for field study, keeping a clean cabin, and being quiet at bedtime.

Countless Estimated number of unofficial beads handed out by high school volunteers to bead-grubbing sixth graders.