Education in Bridgeport, Connecticut Education in Bridgeport, Connecticut Education in Bridgeport, Connecticut includes Bridgeport Public Schools, private and religious schools, a college, and a university. Bridgeport is home to the University of Bridgeport, Housatonic Community College, St. Vincent's College and the Yeshiva Gedola of Bridgeport. Gutchess College was a business school which went defunct circa 1920. The city's public school system has 30 elementary schools, three high schools, two alternative programs and an interdistrict vocational aquaculture school. The system has about 23,000 students, making the Bridgeport Public Schools the second largest school system in Connecticut. The school system employs a staff of more than
History of Bridgeport, Connecticut of deindustrialization and declining population, though it overtook Hartford as the state's most populous city by 1980. Much of the land that became Bridgeport was originally occupied by the Pequonnock Indians of the Paugussett nation. One village consisted of about five or six hundred inhabitants in approximately 150 lodgings. Other than Black Rock and Parts of Brooklawn which were originally part of the township of Fairfield, Bridgeport was originally a part of the township of Stratford. The first English settlement on the west bank of the mouth of the Pequonnock River was made in about 1665 and was called Pequonnock.