Potter Elementary opened in 1957 to serve families in the extreme north end of Dartmouth, at a time when the town's population was pushing outward from its older village centers. A decade later, in 1967, a large addition nearly doubled the school's number of classrooms — a direct response to Dartmouth beginning to offer Kindergarten town-wide for the first time. The school takes its name from Judge George H. Potter, who served for many years on the Dartmouth School Committee, helping shape the very system his namesake school would become part of.