It’s been a pretty quiet couple of weeks in terms of City of Appleton meetings, so I thought I would go back to the 09/11/2023 Appleton Area School District Board of Education meeting in which they discussed the creation of a student attendance committee. The committee would consist of 40-60 including district staff, representatives of certain community organizations, and parents, and its purpose would be to come up with solutions to support students and families and thereby improve attendance.
This came on the heals of a presentation given at a work session on 08/14/2023 in which AASD’s student attendance numbers were reviewed. There had been a very large spike in rates of habitual truancy and chronic attendance concerns during the 2021-2022 school year. Although those numbers had since come down, there was still room for improvement. [The habitual truancy rates look like they are back to where they were during the 2018-2019 school year, but the percentage of students with chronic attendance concerns are still well above the 2018-2019 numbers.]
Superintendent Greg Hartjes said that the numbers were not near to where they were in 2011-2014. He did not give the specifics of what those numbers were, but he said they hoped to get back to those numbers so presumably the numbers in 2011-2014 were lower than in 2018-2019.
The Board ended up voting unanimously to approve the creation of the student attendance committee.
I’ve prepared a transcript of the discussion for download:
AASD Superintendent Hartjes and Laura Jackson, the Executive Director of Student Services, presented the proposal to the Board. They emphasize the importance of improving student attendance and the need for community partnerships to achieve this goal. The committee aims to bring together district staff, community members, specific organizations, parents, and representatives from all student groups to discuss attendance challenges and potential solutions. While AASD had not yet reached out to organizations about joining the committee, Boys and Girls Club, Casa Hispana, and New Hmong Professionals were all mentioned as entities that had expressed interest in participating.
There were some concerns expressed by Board members that the people most likely to want to join such a committee would not be the parents of students with attendance issues. The Board wanted to make sure that those parents were brought into the conversation. Additionally, Board member Ed Ruffolo wanted parents of students with disabilities to participate as well.
There was talk about students themselves participating, but Superintendent Hartjes pointed out, “It’s very hard to get student input when they’re surrounded by 40 adults.” He thought they would get better feedback from students by asking them questions separately from adults.
There was also discussion of having one or two Board of Education members serve on the committee, but that idea did not seem supported by staff. It seemed that staff felt it would be better for Board members to merely be observers rather than active participants. Superintendent Hartjes suggested it might be easier for committee members to share their opinion in a small group if there was not a Board member sitting at the table.
Meetings of the new committee were expected to be held at Kaleidoscope Academy from October through February, with a presentation to the Board planned for March of 2024 in which outcomes and recommendations would be shared.
The Board voted unanimously to approve the creation of the committee.
View full meeting details here: http://go.boarddocs.com/wi/aasd/Board.nsf/goto?open&id=CV6HV24A4508
View full meeting video here: https://www.youtube.com/live/uLzbmAsr65c?si=812rwX5QJG2zo4gA
Be the first to reply