The Safety and Licensing Committee met 03/26/2025. The item that took up the most amount of time was the anti-truancy resolution. During the 03/19/2025 Common Council meeting, Appleton Area School District Superintendent Greg Hartjes had given a presentation on truancy rates in AASD high schools and asked that the City of Appleton implement a truancy ordinance to be trialed for a 4-semester period. Alderperson William Siebers (District 1) then submitted a resolution calling for such an action.
The committee received nearly 40 minutes of feedback from the public on the proposal. It was noted that a meeting was scheduled on 04/15/2025 for stakeholders to discuss this request. That meeting was expected to include Mayor Woodford, as well as representatives of the city attorney’s office, the Police Department, the school district, the county, and the judiciary. The committee ended up voting unanimously to hold the resolution until 05/14/2025 at which point that stakeholder meeting will have taken place and the committee will have its new members for the 2025-2026 Council year.
I’ve prepared a transcript of the committee discussion for download. In order to provide this recap in a timely manner, I did not include the public comments, but I will hopefully be able to provide a recap of the public comments at a later date:
Although it is not included in the transcript, members of the public did provide nearly 40 minutes of feedback. They expressed concern that schools were not adequately funded and could not provide an appropriate level of mental health resources or counselors to students. There were concerns about the impact a new anti-truancy ordinance would have on neurodivergent students as well as students with chronic health issues, mental health issues, and those experiencing bullying.
There was a desire to focus on the root causes of truancy rather on taking punitive measures. There was also concern that some things causing students to be truant, such as needing to care for younger siblings and lacking reliable transportation, were beyond the control of students.
Concern was also raised about the school to prison pipeline. There was a desire to avoid placing students in a scenario where they experienced legal repercussions. There was worry that fines would harm poor families and concerns about whether unpaid tickets given to minors would follow those minors into their adult lives.
Although members of the public attended the meeting and provided public comment, no representative of the Appleton Area School District attended the meeting. Additionally, there was no supplemental information provided by either AASD or city staff in the agenda to accompany the item.
Alderperson Siebers who submitted the resolution told the committee that he wanted it to be held until after the stakeholder meeting on 04//15/2025. He indicated that the resolution in its current form was a shell that merely indicated that the city agreed to become partners with the school district to address the truancy problem. He had specifically not provided much substance or details because he expected those to be added after the 04/15 meeting. He also thought public input would be important in crafting an amended resolution.
There seemed to be general consensus that more details and information were needed before proceeding with the resolution.
Alderperson Patrick Hayden (District 7) who was in attendance but not a member of the committee recommended that the committee deny the resolution outright. He thought it would take longer than a month to turn the shell resolution into something that was ready for prime time. He also felt that bringing the resolution forward in its current form had resulted in a lot of worry and speculation from members of the public about what enforcement might look like.
Additionally, he had some frustration with the AASD leadership. Back in the fall, he had met with Superintendent Hartjes who had convinced him that truancy was an issue that needed to be responded to. Then, in collaboration with Alderperson Chris Croatt (District 14), Police Chief Polly Olson, City Attorney Christopher Behrens, and other members of staff, they had come up with a list of things that needed to have in place for there to be an effective truancy ordinance. He did not feel AASD had adequately accepted their feedback, and stated, “I believe if the superintendent was truly more serious about this not being a punitive action, not being punitive to students, I think he would have been more responsive to the issues that we raised and the potential of creating an infrastructure for a successful ordinance to be handled by the city.”
Alderperson Vered Meltzer (District 2) who was in attendance but not a member of the committee also voiced support for voting the resolution down but was also comfortable with it being placed on hold to facilitate further discussion and said, “The schools do not have the funding that they need to be fully staffed with counselors. The schools are looking for a solution to a problem, and they are asking us for help. I do not think that an ordinance involving the Appleton Police Department is the solution that will help. I think that there is a lot of harm that can result from that. But is there some kind of outside of the box thinking? Is there a partnership where the there’s a way to do something about that resource gap and to increase the number of counselors in the schools?”
Alderperson Denise Fenton (District 6) was in favor of holding the item. She said that she had looked at the anti-truancy ordinances of area municipalities as well as of the 6 larges municipalities in Wisconsin. She said that most of those ordinances were copied from the state statute which was incredibly punitive. Depending on the occurrence a student could be fined up to $500, have their drivers license suspended for a length of time that was longer than a first offence for OWI, or undergo monitoring.
She also noted that just as AASD was short of resources so was the Appleton Police Department and they needed to prioritize enforcement.
Finally, she wanted to see what metrics would be used during the trial period proposed by the resolution to demonstrate whether or not the anti-truancy ordinance was successful. She was willing to hold the item until the middle of May, but she needed to have answers to those questions before she would be willing to take it any further than that.
The committee voted 5-0 to hold the anti-truancy resolution until the 05/14/2025 Safety and Licensing Committee meeting.
[It’s hard to see how an anti-truancy ordinance will effectively combat habitual truancy and absenteeism in our schools when 40% of AASD students are habitually truant. That speaks to much larger issues not necessarily with AASD specifically but with society at large.]
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1281678&GUID=DB3E08F6-2585-49BF-AC3B-77607BB208B8
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