The Appleton Area School District Board of Education met 04/14/2025. One of the information items they received was an update on student attendance numbers, the District Leadership Team’s efforts to get a anti-truancy ordinance passed by the Common Council, and the Leadership Teams reasoning for pursuing the creation of an anti-truancy ordinance.
I’ve prepared a transcript of the discussion for download:
AASD’s leadership team is not concerned so much with truancy which is defined as a student missing all or part of 5 school days or more without an excuse, as they are with chronic absenteeism which is defined as missing 10% or more of total school days including both excused and unexcused absences. 10% of school days equates to 18 school days for the year.
In some respects, many of the PowerPoint slides speak for themselves.
Prior to Covid, the rates of chronic absenteeism among AASD highschoolers were 12.2% in 2017-2018 and 15.2% in 2018-2019. After Covid, in 2021-2022 that jumped to 33.9% and has since come down to around the 25% range in 2022 and beyond.
Over 1,000 AASD high schoolers have been chronically absent, with 293 having missed 50 or more days of school. Superintendent Hartjes said that those 293 students would really struggle to graduate. AASD does provide support and have more alternative education programs than ever, “So, I don’t want you to think that a thousand kids here aren’t going to graduate. We’re still going to work with a lot of kids, and they will graduate, but they certainly have dug themselves a hole when they’ve missed this much school and continue.”
The District has taken steps to try to bring absenteeism down by adapting and updating old responses. Changes include things such as revising the attendance letters they send to families and stressing the importance of attendance in their messaging campaigns and newsletters. Staff has undergone additional training, and AASD has a program that is providing mentors to students who need support with attendance. AASD has worked with the Boys and Girls Club to expand the Truancy Reduction Assessment Center program so that it is available a little bit at the elementary sites.
They have also implemented totally new supports and interventions including things like working with students who are engaged in school avoidance or school refusal and creating alternate plans for them so that they can get them in the building at least a little even if it is just for 1 hour a day and not even in a classroom setting but instead in a small setting with a teacher and a couple of students. They have also been utilizing grant funding to provide gift cards to students as an incentive to attend school. Additionally, they have started trying to provide early attendance intervention at the elementary school level by hiring an elementary attendance coordinator.
They have essentially three tiers of supports in place for students. The Universal supports are sufficient for 80% of students. 20% of students need additional tier 2 supports. And 5% end up moving beyond tier 2 into tier 3 supports.
The District has around 20 students at the high school level who need something more than tier 3 supports. Per Attendance Coordinator Stephanie Marta, school staff has attempted interventions, attempted home visits, attempted to engage the students and families but they cannot get any engagement, and “Most have not stepped foot in a school building this year.”
Superintendent Greg Hartjes described the situation thusly, “There’s nothing more we feel we can do because they don’t engage with us; they don’t answer the door; they don’t answer our letters; they don’t answer our phone calls. So, we’re at a point with these kids where we feel like we’re giving up on them, because there’s nothing further that we can do.”
In response the District put together a committee consisting of staff members, community members, and parents to generate some ideas of what else they could be doing for these students. They came up with 4 suggestions:
- Increase transportation options – The District bought 2 vans to pick up kids, bring them to appointments, and bring them home at the end of the school day. They were also looking into possibly running a couple of late busses for kids who can’t get up in the morning so that they have an opportunity to come later in the morning and at least attend school for some part of the day.
- Improve relevance and engagement of curriculum – Students used to need 2 math credits and 2 science credits to graduate which meant they could start taking electives in their Junior year. Now, state law requires 3 math credits and 3 science credits to graduate which means students may not get to start taking electives until their Senior year. Superintendent Hartjes pointed to that as just “one of many ways that high school has become more challenging, more rigorous, and less, uh, relevant to kids.” He said they were working on that but did not give details about possible solutions.
- Hiring a second attendance coordinator – They hired an attendance coordinator to focus on the elementary level, and AASD was now the only school district in WI to have two full time social workers focused on attendance.
- Create a city anti-truancy ordinance to include a citation as a last resort – This was the recommendation that the committee had given the highest priority to.
Superintendent Hartjes said that in June of 2024 he started meeting with Appleton Council members, city attorneys, the mayor, Outagamie County Chief Justic, and the Outagamie County Executive to talk about what an anti-truancy city ordinance might look like. They were not asking to bring the truancy court back, but they did want a citation that would help get some students into school who are not currently attending. This was viewed as a last resort on top of all the other interventions the District was using to prompt engagement the approximately 20 students who are simply not coming to school. Right now, those students have no reason to engage with AASD, but facing the risk of receiving citations would potentially prompt them.
He gave a presentation on the matter to the Common Council on 03/19/2025, and then on 03/26/2025 the Safety and Licensing Committee discussed the issue and voted to hold it until the 05/14/2025 committee meeting. Superintendent Hartjes mentioned that he had not been able to attend the committee meeting because it happened during Spring Break and he was in Florida, and he had not felt it was appropriate to ask another AASD employee to attend in his stead during their vacation.
His hope was that the ordinance could be implemented for a 4-semester trial period followed by a review of the impact.
There was a question about how the citations would work. It was clarified that AASD would not have the ability to issue citations. Rather, School Resource Officers would issue citations after investigating a situation and reviewing evidence provided by AASD that a student was truant.
Attendance Coordinator Stephanie Marta explained that without anything else in place, there was nothing more staff could do for these students who were not coming to school. “They’re likely not going to graduate from high school. What is their job outlook gonna look like when they’re adults? So, I feel like we need to try something else. And for me as a social worker, it’s not about giving a ticket and saying, ‘Here, pay a fine, because then that’s going to make you come to school.’ That’s not what it’s about. But how can we enforce something to encourage or motivate or engage these students to get back into school?”
Board member Nick Ross did not support the idea of a citation, but he appreciated raising awareness of the issue of attendance. He wondered if they went to referendum would it be beneficial to use some of that money to add funds for transportation or to expand the cash incentive program for students and families, or to increase mental health support for students in school.
He expressed frustration with communication issues between the city and the District and the fact that some people felt that the process had not been transparent. He thought the city and the school district needed to work on communicating better with each other. “Like, I think we all need to be better adults and, like, realize that we need to work together, and I know that the many individuals who are participating in these efforts have done a really great job and a really good faith job of having healthy communication. But when I hear things from public comment and from city officials that are questioning the integrity of the process that we’re going under in pursuing this, I get frustrated by that too, because from the moment this issue has become part of what we’re talking about, every single meeting you have brought up that you’re meeting with city council members, that you are meeting with other folks at the city, and so when folks say that things aren’t transparent, you know, like, I don’t understand that.”
He thought attendance we not just a school issue but also a city issue, “because the students are not in school. They’re out in the community, and they’re using city resources, including the police department. So, the city does have a responsibility to work on this with the district.”
Board member Ed Ruffolo attended the Safety and Licensing Committee meeting, listened to the committee discussion and feedback provided by the public during that meeting, and said, “I was really impressed by how thoughtful people were. People had good discussion. And I think we just have to be a little patient and continue—to your point, Nick—to collaborate with the city and trust their process, because I do think we’re going to come up with a solution.”
Board member Jason Kolpack asked if data was available on how truancy ordinances had impacted attendance in other municipalities. Superintendent Hartjes responded that he had talked to other districts locally and elsewhere in Wisconsin, “and they continue to struggle with chronic absenteeism like we are. The difference is they don’t have a support system like we do. They don’t have two social workers working on it. […] They have more punitive and they’re getting about the same results we are with all of our interventions and supports, but we don’t have that other piece that gets us to the final, you know, 20 kids this year or however many it’s going to be.”
Board member Pheng Thao wondered if there were any individual schools who had implemented promising practices that had improve attendance at individual sites. He also wondered what happened next if students did get to school. Were they actually learning and maintaining knowledge? Were they experiencing long-term change?
Executive Director of Student Services Laura Jackson said that each school level and each building was doing different things to improve attendance numbers. Additionally, once a student was in the door staff was striving to help them start learning some of the things they had been missing out on.
Attendance Coordinator Stacey Nitka also said that they share resources and ideas with staff members from other districts and were also looking for other options and tools.
Board member Kris Sauter appreciated the additional attendance support at the elementary and middle school level and wondered if that would end up impacting high school attendance rates once those kids moved into high school. She also appreciated all of the alternative programs the District provided.
There was a meeting scheduled for April 15 between various stakeholders to discuss the truancy issue. She asked what the purpose of the meeting was. Was it just focused on a possible anti-truancy ordinance or would it focus on alternative measures in general to increase attendance.
Superintendent Hartjes responded, “So, the meeting is not a district meeting. It was brought together by the mayor, and we appreciate him doing that just to get the County Youth and Family Services, county judges, staff members from the city, and staff members from the district together at one table, because I’ve had individual conversations with all of these people, just to be efficient. And you know, let’s come together and talk about what are reservations that people have. What—are they capacity issues? Are they philosophical? What—you know, really it’s to just hear from everybody on what maybe would keep this from moving forward. So, no, it’s not to the point of talking about solutions. It’s really about is everybody at that table tomorrow ready to engage?”
[It was mentioned that some of the 20 students with the most attendance issues have not even set foot in a school building this year. It wasn’t clear to me how, if that was the case, they could even be included in the September and January counts and why they should even be considered enrolled. I did contact AASD with that question, but, given that it is Easter weekend, I would assume it will be a few days until someone can respond.
Everything AASD staff members are doing sounds exhausting, and if what they are doing is required by state law then I think state law is making inappropriate demands on public schools. It sounds like the District is essentially taking on the responsibilities of parents for these students which is not appropriate to ask teachers and support staff to do.
I think that viewing publicly funded education as a “right” is inherently a socially corrosive view that has resulted in public schools being required to tolerate inappropriate behavior from students and has allowed both parents and students to offload their responsibilities onto the school system. If publicly funded education is going to be maintained it would probably be more sustainable to view it was a service that you need to qualify for instead of a right that you’re allowed to abuse and take for granted.]
View full meeting video here: https://aasd.granicus.com/player/clip/32
View meeting details here: https://d3n9y02raazwpg.cloudfront.net/aasd/b9ffda8c-10c5-11f0-955d-005056a89546-2171d860-3ac4-49db-84a5-200d91432c4c-1744403264.pdf
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