Springfield, Oregon renovation project, completed at a cost of $3.1 million. There are 15 elementary, 4 middle, and 4 high schools in the Springfield School District, making it one of the largest in the state. The largest public high schools, by enrollment, are Thurston High School and Springfield High School. Pioneer Pacific College also has a campus in the Gateway area of Springfield. The city took third in the voting to choose one of the sixteen possible Springfields in the U.S. to host the premiere of "The Simpsons Movie." The show's creator, Oregon resident Matt Groening, sent a plaque to the city
The Springfield Connection that the theme's composer John Williams is dead, complaining: "Laser effects, mirrored balls—John Williams must be rolling around in his grave!". Kurt M. Koenigsberger analyzes Homer's comments about the Springfield Pops rendition of the "Star Wars" theme in Koenigsberger's piece "Commodity Culture and Its Discontents: Mr. Bennett, Bart Simpson, and the Rhetoric of Modernism" published in the compilation work "Leaving Springfield: The Simpsons and the Possibility of Oppositional Culture" edited by John Alberti. Koenigsberger comments: "The joke in this opening scene involves a confusion of high and popular artistic production: Marge treats the Springfield Pops as 'culture' and expects that