On 04/14/2025, the Appleton Area School District Board of Education received a presentation on truancy issues at AASD and the steps the Leadership Team was taking to lobby the City of Appleton to implement a truancy ordinance to help combat this problem. During this presentation it was mentioned that there were around 20 AASD high school students who have severe attendance problems. 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.”
I reached out to AASD and asked how these students could even be included in the September and January enrollment counts if they had not even been in a building this year.
Superintendent Greg Hartjes responded and explained that students do not count toward the District’s official “membership” and the District did not receive funding for them unless they attend school on the 3rd Friday of September or at least one day prior to and one day after the 3rd Friday. The same applied to the 2nd Friday in January count.
At the same time, regardless of whether they were included in the membership count, students are considered enrolled until AASD gets a records request from another school signifying that the student is transferring or being homeschooled.
This raises the question of whether these 20 students who have not attended a single day of class are still living in AASD’s boundaries and are legitimately truant or if they have moved away and their “truancy” is simply the result of paperwork issues. I emailed Superintendent Hartjes back and asked him if AASD had confirmed whether these students were still living within district boundaries, but he has not yet responded.
I think this is a relevant question that should be answered because these 20 students are being put forward as the reason why a truancy ordinance is needed, but the truancy ordinance will not only apply to them. Rather it will be something that can be utilized against any student who fits within the ordinance framework even if their truancy issues are far more limited than the purported issues of these 20 students. Additionally, if these 20 students are not actually truant but are simply truant on paper because of record-keeping issues, a truancy ordinance will not be a useful tool to combat this problem.
I also think that there are some legitimate questions about the responsible use of resources in this. If these 20 students have never set foot in a school building, then AASD is not being paid to educate them, and they have expended what seems to be a lot of staff time and energy on students who are only students on paper. Additionally, pursuit of the truancy ordinance has resulted in Appleton and Outagamie County staff members and elected official expending what sounds like a noteworthy amount of time and energy.
In addition to asking Superintendent Hartjes whether these students were still living in AASD’s boundaries, I also asked him what the District was legally required to do for students enrolled on paper but who have never attended class, and I asked if he could provide an estimate of how much money these students were costing AASD in staff hours and resources spent pursuing them.
As I noted, he has not as of yet responded to my email, but when and if he does, I will update this post. [Update 05/13/2025: Superintendent Hartjes eventually responded and stated the Attendance Coordinators were “99% certain the students continue to reside in Appleton.”]
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