APPLETON – Greg Hartjes, superintendent of the Appleton Area School District (AASD), spoke frankly of the district’s challenges and opportunities at the April 1 meeting of Fox Valley Initiative, which took place at FreedomProject Academy in Appleton.
In an hour-long presentation, Hartjes discussed:
- the district’s chronic absenteeism and student behavior problems;
- its demographic challenges; and
- literacy — specifically, the district’s new phonics program — as a response to those demographic challenges.
He also briefly discussed the private school voucher program; those comments may be addressed in a future article.
Hartjes made his PowerPoint available for us to post online; you can find it here.
Chronic Absenteeism
Habitual truancy — defined as five or more days absent without an excuse — hasn’t been a major problem for the district, which has 15,200 students, Hartjes said. Truancy figures haven’t changed much over time.
The bigger problem, Hartjes said, is chronic absenteeism — missing 10% or more of school days, roughly 18+ days in a normal school year. [See Slide 4] Between 2017–18 and the first semester of 2023–24, absenteeism rates have at least doubled at the 4k/elementary, middle, and high school levels.
Hartjes explained that in 2019, the Appleton police department stopped issuing truancy citations to students. As a result, the district has “no legal recourse after its done everything they can to get students back to school.” He said the “#1 solution to this problem is to ask the city to reinstate the citation.”
Behavior Problems
Similarly, Hartjes said, the schools often have little legal recourse for addressing student behavior problems. Surprising most of the meeting’s attendees, he said the “4, 5, and 6 year-olds are the biggest problem.” He explained, “If there is a 5-year-old who punches a teacher, there isn’t much we can do.”
State Sen. Rachael Cabral-Guevara, who was attending the event, noted she had authored a bill in the most recent legislative session that would have given schools ways to address disruptive students. Advocacy groups for the disabled opposed the bill, even though she excluded students with Individual Education Plans (IEPs) from the measure’s provisions. She thanked Hartjes for his support of the bill.
Hartjes said federal laws prevent the schools from doing anything unless a student is hurting him/herself or others. If they’re tearing stuff off the walls, throwing chairs or toys or books, or being disruptive in other ways, “we can’t do a thing” — even though such behavior clearly disrupts other students’ learning and can even cause trauma in other students.
In a more positive development, Hartjes said, AASD has this year banned cellphone use by students except during lunch or in the hallways. Years ago, they attempted to do so and parents opposed those efforts … but they’re no longer fighting schools on this. He cited a recent article in The Atlantic that pointed out how damaging cellphone use is to human development.
He also noted School Resource Officers (SROs, essentially police officers in the schools) are giving students tickets for loitering — when they’re in the school building “hanging out,” but not in the classrooms where they belong. He said a student’s loitering ticket is held “open” for 30 days, and if there are no additional violations the ticket is closed and no fine is assessed. But if the student continues to violate the rules against loitering, he/she will be fined.
Overall, Hartjes explained, “the pendulum has swung away from consequences — and now we’re pulling that back.”
Demographics
Hartjes said AASD’s demographics used to be similar to those in Kaukauna, Kimberly, and other area school districts — but that’s no longer true. [See Slide 8] He noted, for example, that more than 60 languages are the primary language spoken by AASD students. In the first semester of 2023–24, the district had 88 “newcomers” — many of them refugees — from 18 different countries [See Slide 11]. These students speak no English at all.
The district’s assistant superintendent, Michael Hernandez, spearheads the district’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion efforts. Hernandez says Literacy is our equity strategy. According to Hartjes, DEI for Hernandez means “all students must learn to read, write, and speak English well.”
Phonics
A former math teacher, Hartjes said “it’s taken us years to recover” from the damage done by Common Core, especially in math but also in reading. He discussed the district’s new phonics initiative, a $2 million investment with two parts:
- UFLI Foundations, which Hartjes said is the part that teaches “foundational skills” — that is, phonics; and
- Wit & Wisdom, the part that teaches “language comprehension, what do the words mean.”
Addressing a few questions concerning other elements of the AASD curriculum, Hartjes noted:
- “CRT (Critical Race Theory) is nowhere in our curriculum.” In fact, he said, he hadn’t even heard of CRT until three or four years ago, when the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty did a FOIA records request.
- “We share with parents our syllabi for every class, so they know what books their students will read.” Parents have the right to opt their kids out of reading objectionable books in the classroom.
- With respect to books in the school libraries that might be concerning, Hartjes said “send me a list of books that are concerning, and I will look into it.” He said the district uses Common Sense Media to evaluate the appropriateness of books for specific ages and grade levels. [Reporter’s note: Gender Queer: A Memoir, a book that has raised concerns for parents, is rated by Common Sense Media as appropriate for students age 16+, noting it has “explicit images.”]
Conclusion
Hartjes’s presentation was interesting and informative. You can find his PowerPoint here.
For more information about Fox Valley Initiative and its regular monthly programs, visit its website at www.foxvalleyinitiative.com.
